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I had my first ride on my Orange Five the other night, after setting the sag on forks (RS Pike 150mm w/ MRP Ramp Control) and shock (Cane Creek DB Air). I'm pretty happy with the low speed compression and both the forks and shock were good and supportive, but I found that when smashing through rooty sections it felt uncontrolled and a bit all over the shop.
What settings do I need to play with to get the forks and shock to absorb that kind of stuff better? I'd like the bike to feel more planted over roots and the like, without losing the support and 'pedalability'...
Whell first of all even if youre happy with lsc, when you change other variables you'll effect that too
But more (slower) rebound will help tame things
If you're blowing thru travel too quickly on fast rough stuff increase ramp up/ad spacers and lower air pressure a wee bit
Well the DBair is one of the most-controlled shocks in the biz, so I'd hope you could improve things there.
Get the rebound sorted at both ends first, then try lowering the HSC for more grip.
Whether you need to use tokens or your ramp cartridge to adjust progressivity will have to be your call, but I've found too many tokens can make my Orange Stage 6 very skittish.
Could be a few things from that description:
Not enough rebound so it’s springing back at you too much
Too much compression damping so it’s spiking a bit on impacts
Too much air / tokens and it’s not allowing you to make the most of all the travel
On the fork if it’s a Pike Uktimate you have hsc / lsc / lsr adjustment.
I think the db air has hsc / lsc / hsr / lsr.
So lots to tinker with. Just make one change at a time.
I normally start setting the sag via air pressure. Somewhere around 25-30 on the fork and around 30 on the rear. Both rebound and compression wide open (I.e the minimum damping possible).
I then look to get rebound sorted so it’s still lively but not springing back at me too much.
After that it’s lsc - jut enough to stop it bobbing too much under pedalling and diving under breaking.
Then ride it a bit more and see where I am. If it’s often diving through the travel too much towards the end then bottomless tokens in the fork. I don’t know if you can adjust the airspring size in the shock?
Then hsc is last and for fine tuning.
With my coils shock I was happy with everything in general but I had one trail with 2 steep bomb holes that had a big compression in the bottom. I felt like mhe bike was folding in half a bit just on those. 2 clicks of stiffer hsc and it’s now perfect even through those extremes.
I find the below cane creek guide handy for working out what to change:
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Useful stuff cheers all. I'm a set and forget kind of guy and this is my first FS in years so advice is much appreciated!
I've knocked back the progression on the ramp control a bit and took a 1/2 a turn out of the HSC and will try again. Trail centre trip on Sunday so will take my allen keys for on-the-fly tweaks.
Try adding more HSC on the rear as well.
Dial it too far in each direction, and that should help you understand which way you need to make smaller adjustments - if that makes sense.
And if you make significant changes to the compression dials (how fast the suspension goes down), you may also need to change the rebound dials (how fast it comes back up) - otherwise the bikes could start feeling bucky.
assume your tyres are in good order and you're running what pressure?
increasing the hsr will take out the skittish feeling
after setting the sag on forks (RS Pike 150mm w/ MRP Ramp Control) and shock (Cane Creek DB Air)
give this a read.
https://www.shockcraft.co.nz/technical-support/setup-suspension/suspension-setup
I tend to start by just rolling off all of the high speed compression. I don't think I've got a single click of it across all my bikes.
HSR is probably the hardest to tune on a cane creek, after a bit of fannying around I just set it by jumps now- if it kicks on takeoff I turn it down til it doesn't.
Forgot to say on my last post the mrp ramp control is the equivalent of 2 tokens I think on its lightest setting. I tried one on a 160 or 170mm Lyrik (I forget which travel it was at at the time) and it had too much ramp up for me. I ended up running either 1 or 0 bottomless tokens in the end and selling the ramp control unit on. It was a nice idea but didn’t work for my weight / riding style / length of fork travel.