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How tos, Tech tips » Cory

Official user manuals for mountain bike rear shocks

Yesterday, I spent some time describing some of the key terms that come up when people are discussing the rear shocks on mountain bikes. Having read that entry, I hope that words like ’sag’, ‘rebound’, ‘compression’, and ’stroke’ don’t send you scurrying for the door.

Now that you’re armed with the basic information you need when discussing and dialling in your rear shock, I want to provide a basic listing of all of the rear shock manuals from the major manufacturers. Every shock manual I’ve come across has detailed instructions on setting up your shock, and I’d recommend following them to the ‘T’ to get the most out of your gear. I recognize that many of you already have this things sitting in your bike maintenance areas but, if you’re like me, manuals have a tendency to disappear over time. With this directory, I hope that you’ll be able to track down quickly the information that you’re looking for and get out of the shop and onto the trail without grinding your teeth because of poorly designed websites, hidden files, and whatever other obstacles the Internet throws at you.

Official manuals for major rear shocks

Answer Products. Answer Products manufactures, among other things, the Manitou suspension lineup. Answer is responsible for the Swinger brand of rear shocks, along with other names such as the Metel, Radium, S-Type, and Revox. Currently, the 2006 manuals are not accessible online, so I’ll update this section when those items become available.

• Manitou Swinger product manual: 2003, 2004, 2005
• Manitou Metel product manual: 2005
• Manitou Radium product manual: 2005

Avalanche Downhill Racing. Avalanche’s rear shocks are well known in the big hit world for their bottomless feel and their stictionless movement throughout their travel. The company has a pretty wide range of shocks and you can download the manuals for each of Avalanche’s rear shocks from the product’s information page.

Cane Creek. Cane Creek is better known in the mountain biking world for its line of headsets, but the company also has a number of rear shocks that are quite popular inside certain circles. All of the manuals for the Cane Creek shock lineup are conveniently located on a single page on their website.

Fox Racing Shox. One of the biggest names in mountain bike suspension is Fox Racing Shox. With a fork lineup that is widely acclaimed and rear shocks that are spec’d on many of the largest bike manufacturer’s in the world, Fox shocks can be found wherever you find mountain bikes. All of the Fox suspension manuals are available on a single page of their website. Also, the website features a very good troubleshooting guide that will help you diagnose some of the more common problems associated with fine tuning your suspension.

Marzocchi. Marzocchi is a relative newcomer to the mountain bike rear suspension scene and, for 2006, the company’s only non-OEM product is the Roco, a cool-looking coil over shock that supposedly feels great. If anyone out there has actually ridden one of these things, feel free to add your thoughts below.

Progressive Suspension. The Progressive Suspension Fifth Element rear shock really burst onto the scene when it was first spec’d on the Santa Cruz Bullit a few years ago. Since then, Progressive’s suspension products have made a few inroads into the market and can now be found on a number of popular bikes. The company offers two main types of shocks: air shocks and coil over shocks.

Rock Shox. Until this year, Rock Shox was effectively invisible since losing favour a few years back as an OEM supplier for companies like Giant Bicycles. However, the brand was revitalized when it was purchased by SRAM and has a number of cool new products for 2006. First up is the Rock Shox Pearl, a high volume air shock that’s being spec’d on a bunch of bikes, including one of the models in the 2006 Cannondale Prophet MX lineup. Rock Shox also produces the MC3 and Ario rear shocks and, for 2006, all of the necessary setup information can be found in a single manual. In addition to the manual, you can find a number of suspension tuning tips on the Rock Shox website.

Third-party advice on setting up rear shocks

If you run a Fox rear shock, word on the street that the best thing you can do for your shock is to send it to an aftermarket ‘tuning’ company like PUSH Industries. PUSH offers complete rebuilds of Fox shocks and, by all accounts, the shocks feel butter-smooth once they’re back in your hands. We’ll have a review of a PUSH’d shock in the near future.

Another good place to look for advice on setting up your rear shock is on public mountain bike forums. While it’s really important to take any advice garnered from bulletin boards like NSMB.com, Pinkbike.com, and MTBR.com with a grain of salt — you never know who is providing the advice — you can often find a bunch of valuable information in a relatively short time by searching through the appropriate forums.

Summary

Setting up your bike’s rear suspension correctly will take some time, but if you actually take the time to do it properly, you’ll get better value from your shock, your bike will perform better and, most importantly, you’ll have a better time on your bike. After you’ve set your bike’s rear suspension to the factory-recommended settings, feel free to play around with some of the individual adjustments on your shock — you’ll often stumble onto that ’sweet spot’ that makes all of your efforts worthwhile.

And unless you’ve got a picture perfect memory, be sure to take notes through the whole process — there’s nothing worse than finding the ideal setup for your ride and then forgetting how you got there.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 23rd, 2006 at 12:05 am and is filed under How tos, Tech tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.