Can Science Make You Faster? | We Try The Latest MTB Pro Tech!

Will all this kit make me faster? Modern mountain bike suspension is amazing technology. It makes riding faster, easier, and I think more enjoyable as well, but do you know how to set it up? Well, I think I do, but I don't know that. Today, I'm using some pro-level suspension telemetry kit to tell me exactly what my suspension is doing and if I can set it up better. Pro downhill racers use every single resource they can to make themselves as fast as possible, obviously, for winning races. You often see setups like this. This is a BYB telemetry kit. You can see the brains, and then you've got the sensor on the fork and the shock, plus a GPS. It's going to work out what my suspension is doing. It's crazy accurate as well. I think it records 1,000 times per second. Pro downhillers use this often in practice to set their bikes up, but is it good for an amateur rider like me? Today, I'm using all this kit, but critically, I'm also using some suspension tuner knowledge. I've got Jim from J Tech to help me translate what my bike is doing, and if it's doing what I think it is, and also try to explain to you, the viewers, what low-speed compression, high-speed compression, all those things mean, and actually what it's doing to my bike on the trail. The bike I'm using is an Orbea Rallon. This is their Enduro bike. You'll see their factory race team, people like Martin Mays, using this bike at the Enduro World Cups. 170 mil front travel, 167 rear, and suspension, it's got a Fox 38 factory fork up front, so it's got the Grip 2 damper in there. I always set my sag around 20%, so that actually is about 80 PSI in there. I'm around 72, 73 kilograms at the moment. I think I'm weighing myself for a little while, actually. I like to use those setup guides to make sure I'm there or thereabouts when I first ride the bike. I don't often change that much from there, to be fair. Maybe go a couple of clicks on something, just depending on how it feels. In that guide, it'll tell you to wind the dials in, and then so many clicks back out from there. On the compression, it is five from fully in on the high-speed, and then 10 on the low-speed compression. On the rebound, it's seven on the high-speed rebound, and six on the low-speed rebound. Same for the rear shocks. You've got high-speed rebound there, low-speed rebound, and then high and low-speed compression on that one there. Loads to get wrong, to be fair, but like I say, I always go on the base settings and set that at 30% sag. For me, that is 150 PSI. I'll do some practice and put a time in on my base settings, how I would normally ride this bike. Nothing else changes, so tire pressure stays the same. I'm actually running this bike in the mixed wheel size setup, so 27.5 rear. I've got a 28 PSI rear tire, 26 up front. Like I say, nothing else changes, so I'm going to see how much difference I can make with my suspension, if it's going to make me faster. I'm riding in at Clan Gotham, a downhill venue with various tracks used for UK national level races. I'm going to make sure I learn one track well, and then I can see how I feel about my suspension, add the telemetry kit, and see if those things match up, or will the telemetry tell me another story? Could I be set kit as well. This is for timing. I've got a GPS on my bike, I've got a wheel speed sensor, and a start and a finish trigger to make this super, super accurate. You can do it with just a unit alone, but I've got all the extras, all the bells and whistles, so I can put a time to how I feel as well. Base settings, run one with telemetry to tell me what's going on. Three, two, one. Well, Jim, it's a bit like the old days, doing some dyno runs, and you're helping me out. I've put a time in now on my settings. I guess there's a lot of variables up there. It rained quite heavily yesterday, so there's a bit of slipping around, there's a bit of me learning the track, but I've done a few good runs now, and I've set a time with all the kit on. Is it telling us anything really obviously straightaway? Yes. The initial thing we look at first is your dynamic sag. On the fork, it's looking pretty good, but on the rear, it's a little bit soft on the rear at the moment. By that, you mean throughout the run, I'm sitting too far in? Yes. It takes an average of every position it's in during the run, and then that is basically your dynamic sag, so the position that you're in most of the time as you're going down the track. At the moment, that's sitting a little bit too deep into the travel. I'm setting my static sag at 30%, but maybe a little bit off, to be fair. Going a bit firm on the rear? Yes, we're going to go a little bit firmer on the rear. It's also showing initially that the rebound is a touch slow on the fork as well in comparison to the shock, so we're going to change that. That's all we'll work on to start with. When we've got your dynamic sag set, we'll carry on fine-tuning the rebound, and then we'll start working on your compression damping after that. Are you working at two ends of the bike? You're not taking them separately? No, no, two ends. Say, for example, if it was a drastic change at the rear, you would expect some weight to shift to the front. If it was looking slightly soft on the front, but okay, but you're firming up the rear, I'd probably firm up the front ever slightly as well because you're going to get your weight shifting towards the front a little bit. We'll preempt things like that, but it's only small changes for now. You're not a million miles away on this set. Most of the changes we've been talking about here have been about air pressure and spring rates, but if you've seen any racers talk about setup changes, you'll often hear about things like high-speed and low-speed adjustments. In case you've wondered what they are, here's what you need to know. Sag is simple. It's the measurement of how much your suspension moves when you put your weight onto the bike. Compression damping is the control speed of the fork or shock going into its travel. Low-speed compression controls things like body movement or turns, where it's about weight transfer. High-speed compression is where the suspension moves fast, like on big impacts from jumps or hard hits on the track. Rebound damping controls the rate of how fast the suspension returns after an impact. Too much damping makes them return slowly and therefore not get to extension in time for the next hit. Too little damping and the bike can feel kicky like a pogo stick, an uncontrolled spring. My bike has an air fork and shock, which can make harder or softer really easily using a shock pump. They're super tunable, which I like, but some people feel that they lack a little in small bump sensitivity compared to a core suspension that uses a spring. Jim's doing the deep dive there. I'm doing just the times. That's fun. It's been a while since I've repeated runs knowing that I'm against the clock and I love it. Jim will tell me, I felt like a bottomed out. You know what? It wasn't obvious if it was front or rear, to be fair. I felt like just a bit of a clunk in one of the compressions. Bike felt good. Obviously, I'm warming up a bit as well, so I'm nailing bits of the track better, but it was pretty close. That run was a 2.04.822. It records it to the thousandths of a second as well, so 2.04.822 compared to the first run, which was 2.07.621. It's a reasonable chunk and bike felt really balanced, except for maybe the bottom out, but Jim will tell me if I'm making things up. Jim tells me there were no bottom outs on that run. On closer inspection, there is a small bit of damage on the rear tire sidewall where it meets the rim. I must have bottomed out the tire. It's a quick fix of the tire plug and I've upped the pressure slightly to 29 PSI in the rear. Jim, what is the data telling us? Yes, we're still a little soft on the rear, so we're going to firm that up and just speed up the high-speed rebound a touch as well. It's fun, isn't it? I took a few more risks and going into the woods is a bit of a gnarly section where I'm getting a bad line as well. You have to think about that in the times a bit, but going harder again on the rear shock. Jim, is there a point where we think, don't go harder, but maybe add volume spaces? Yes, at the moment, there's plenty of bottom-in resistance, so I'm not worried about that. It's more we're just getting the sag right, which is just done by your pressure. If you add volume spaces, it's not going to affect your sag point. It'll just affect from middle to end, depending on how many you've got already. I always look at the O-ring, I suppose, and I guess if your O-ring is telling me I'm not bottoming out, that's all you really know, I suppose, other than feel. It's quite interesting getting the data fed back to me. The problem is the data still doesn't mean anything to me if you look at the numbers and the graphs. As far as what suspension is doing, I'm not the expert here, so I need Jim's help to get it where it needs to be. Down to 203 on that run, so I've knocked the best part of four seconds off. I know conditions are maybe a bit better, but without thinking too much about it, the bike feels better. I'm just trying to ride as hard as I can, but what have we actually done with the bike? We've gone up pressure on the shock. Yes, we've gone up quite a bit on the shock, 15 PSI on the shock to get your dynamic sag in a better place, and a couple of minor changes to the rebound on the fork and shock just to get that balanced. Anything else, do you think, or are we almost there? Yes, we could potentially try a little bit more pressure again in the shock, but at the same time drop a volume spacer. Then I'm using more of the travel more of the time. Yes, exactly. I think with more pressure than we've got now, you will be struggling to get through towards the end of the travel, so we'd drop a volume spacer just to get that balance out really. Sounds good. It's been actually a really interesting day with Jim. Realizing that I was really close to the fork, but actually on the rear shock, I was quite a way off. We've gone up almost 20 PSI now on that rear shock and taken out a volume spacer. That's going to make it sit within that nicer range of the travel more of the time. This bike should feel quite a bit different. There's always tons of variables with doing these runs, of course. The track is dried out. I feel a bit better. Hopefully, when I come to jump on the bike next time, it's going to feel better than it did before. It's been really interesting to just dig into what's going on with this stuff as well, actually try out some of this kit as well. Let us know if you've enjoyed this video, if you want to see some more technical stuff, and if you really are interested in the nitty-gritty of setting up your suspension.