Suspension "balance"

03/01/25 23:16 Filed in: Gear

Many set-up guides will assist getting the settings in the suspension fork and the shock close to correct for a rider - even if the rider doesn't know what they are doing. I keep reading that most people do not play with the suspension settings at all. That's disappointing because there is so much potential contained in turning a few knobs and adjusting air pressure.
One thing the guides seem to deal with less often is the concept of fore-aft balance. Set the two ends of the bike up in isolation and go ride. If they are quite far from each other in behaviour, the end result is going to be an ill-handling bike. Most suspension runs an o-ring on the inner suspension piece to visually reveal how much travel was used. Probably not on any single run, but certainly through a couple of hours of riding, the front and rear should exploit a very similar proportion of travel - and that proportion should be near full travel.
You don't have to bottom it out every time out. And if you have an Enduro bike, as the best example, riding it on lower speed trails will not push the suspension through its travel if it is set up to deal with higher speed impacts. But if you never bottom out the suspension, then something is not set correctly.

Take my recent ride at Thredbo. Even a low-speed day at a ski hill is a high-speed day compared to almost anywhere else. The runs are long, tend to be steep, and give plenty of opportunity to let the bike run wide open. I was running about 1/3 sag in the shock on my DH bike prior to the day. I put a little air in, dropping sag to 30%. I didn't touch the fork. By the end of the day, I had used 95% travel up front and only 80% travel out back. It felt off all day and I think it was the rear not working in harmony with the front (the test will be next time with the rear restored to 33% sag).
If the rear is too high in the travel, it steepens the head angle and pushes weight forward.
Meanwhile my partner's bike used about 98% travel at both ends. Perfect. Those last few percent of travel require hitting something HARD because there is a bottom out bumper inside that has to be squashed out of the way.

I suggest you tinker. Change one thing at a time. Keep notes. Try the extremes to see what they do - rebound and compression can cover a small or wide range of actions depending on the brand and model of suspension. I like to bracket - 0 clicks is not enough. All the clicks (just for this example, let's say that is 10 clicks) is too many. Five clicks is close but too little. Eight clicks is close but too many. Six clicks seems good. Seven clicks seems good too. When in doubt, I would default towards less damping. In the example, that would be 6 clicks and not 7. Having decided on 6 clicks, it is time to try something else - if that was rebound now try compression. These things interact. With X pressure and Y clicks of compression, there will be an optimal rebound setting. But change air pressure and/or compression settings and the optimal rebound is likely to be different. Experiment.

While I prefer "set and forget" I acknowledge that sometimes the optimal is a few clicks different at different trail locations (different altitude, different dirt, different slopes). And if you sometimes carry a few kg of stuff on your back, where other times you do not, that can alter best suspension settings too.

Michael Hanslip Coaching

If you want to go faster, you have to pedal harder

Suspension "balance"