How to Set Up Rebound Damping
Setting up your suspension is becoming more complex. It used to be, pick a spring, set your rebound and compression damping and you were riding. Now many dampers allow you to adjust both damping circuits for both high and low speed impacts. Beyond that there are volume spacers, fluid level tweaks and even custom tuning via shim stacks. And of course all of this will need to be redone when you put on another 10 lbs.
Any bike shop employee will tell you that your average mountain biker doesn’t have a clue how to set up their suspension. I realize that our audience is anything but average, but many of us (myself included) often find it challenging to get the perfect set up.
Enter andrextr! Andre is a Portugese rider with a knack for explaining suspension principles and set up to regular riders.
What did we learn?
Comments
Morgan Heater
7 years, 2 months ago
So, as one of the aforementioned riders who is totally clueless - Is he right? And also, how do I set my fork rebound correctly?
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Cam McRae
7 years, 2 months ago
There is likely more than one way to skin this cat, but this method should be effective. He talks about forks later on (10:32), essentially setting it up by feel. He suggests 'fairly fast' and 'at least as fast as the rear.'
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AndreXTR
7 years, 2 months ago
Thank you for sharing this. This method is a good starting point for tuning the rebound. With this method you avoid an extreme setting (which many people have). There is no advantage on having the rebound slower than critical damping. So this method is good to avoid those slower settings. The question is how faster it should be. With a tiny bounce on curb test you got a damping similar to what is used on many off-road vehicles. It keeps a good amount of stability on the bike without overshooting and recovery quickly enough to track successive bumps. I don't recommend to go much faster than this since you will sacrifice stability and you will amplify pedal Bob and other lower frequencies inputs. Bye
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slyfink
7 years, 2 months ago
I followed his setup instructions last year. What a difference! Turns out I was running a pogo stick before…
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Bill Bailey
7 years, 2 months ago
Great information !
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