Front suspension setup? Trio?

[M5-]

Before you drop a whole bunch of money into forks you need to honestly answer a couple of questions, "What kind of rider am I" and how big am I.

Me, I'm a powder rider, 210 lbs geared up I don't do huge drops, I don't ride much in the spring when its set up and I don't really give a $hit how it is on the trail. I've never re-sprung any forks. 7-10w oil and increase compression and rebound is plenty stiff for me. I've ridden bikes with huge spring rates and stiff front ends, I don't like them and I don't see the attraction, that's just me you may be different. They plow too much for me and give a kind of weird feel like the suspension isn't working. You don't need a lot of suspension in powder compared to whooped out trails and/or hard pack. Look at modern powder skis they are all soft now.

Try your set up and go from there. Don't believe everything you read on here or any other forums including this post, you need to find what works for you.


M5

 

[Answ3r]

Financially the best option is to add ALOT more oil and turn the clickers all the way in. Use a heavier weight and change it in the spring when you switch back to dirt. The oil gets water in it over the winter any way. I haven't tried the trio but have tried stiffer springs and air and my favorite set up is NO air , lots of oil and stiff valving. You want to add so much oil so the fork hydro locks BEFORE the seals slam into the fit kit. It won't hurt if you add too much they still ride better than stock you just don't get as much travel, just dump some out next ride and measure so you can repeat next year.

You sure hydro locking the forks won't damage them ?

It feels to me like that would overly stress parts on the fork that aren't meant to be stressed that way.

 

[rhino89523]

M5 probably has the best advise,

set it up and try it out, I am with him 100% that you really don't need a whole bunch to make a snowbike ride in powder well. My situation is a little different because a stock bike squashes out like a minibike, I'm probably real close to 300lbs suited and booted.

 

[Jaynelson]

I am surprised to hear that. I don't consider myself huge (210lbs) and don't consider myself a seasoned snowbiker.....but I constantly bottom out stock forks with the clickers wound in on any SB I've ever ridden. Even small jumps or bumps, even in powder. I guess if you never catch a creek wrong, or never come off the ground much it's ok....but you're still riding halfway through the travel the whole time.

I much prefer heavier springs....keeping in mind that most bikes are sprung for a 180lb (for dirt) rider out of the box. That said, haven't tried the extra oil thing or the airpro.

 

[AK1000]

I'm 225 and even with heavy springs(.66) I am always half travel with small bumps and bottom quite a few times a trip. I am trying the Airpro this season.
It also depends on bike model, another bike in our group has factory springs and same rider weight and rarely bottoms.
Definitely ride it first!

 

[eric82930]

The forks don't actually hydro lock with too much oil, there is always an air cushion in there. They just stop moving because the air pressure is greater than the pressure pushing them down. Its far less shock on the tubes then slamming the outer tubes into the fit kit at high speed!

Evan a standard oil level will still create more air spring force a bottoming than the springs themselves do. Springs mainly control the ride height.

PJ1 sells fork oil up to 15w and motor oils are even thicker but the viscosity ratings don't compare so a 5w auto oil is thicker then a 5w shock oil. ATF is about a 7-10 weight. Keep in mind the thicker oil needs to be in the damper so if you have twin chambers you need the thicker oil where the valving is.

I agree with M5, I DONT like a stiff spring or even more than 15psi in my airpro really annoyed me it caused too much ski pressure, heavy steering and weird rebound. But I also ride in all conditions and even prefer the softer initial spring in hard whooped out spring snow.

My prefect setup would be more oil and a crazy stiff compression stack. Not rocket science just twice as many big dia. shims or take away the 2 smallest ones to make a bigger dia pivot to support the whole stack stiffer. Snow valving is super simple compared to dirt there are no rocks or high speed impacts to really worry about.

Keep in mind the problem with your forks is often coming from the back of the bike. You need to get the front of the track to carry some of the weight off the fork. If your limiter is tight and or the strut rod too long, it won't let the front of the track carry the load so EVERYTHING in front of your back bumper is being partially carried by your fork! Moving the gas back, pegs back or even flipping the bar mounts back helps a lot too.

In My opinion the trio would only be good if you didn't want to mess around with the forks at all, I would set up the trio with as little preload as possible and it would probably be pretty good but still not worth $1000. I would still change my fork oil every spring so going to have to mess with the forks eventually either way.

 

[powdermuncher]

Exactely what he said most of the need for stiffer forks is due to the set up of the skid and Positioning of weight in particular the rider. Rear set food pegs and bars make a huge difference.

 

[rhino89523]

I agree valving isn't as crucial for me as my dirtbike or even my sand bike for that matter. The compression I backed way out through valving because my compression is crazy with the super stiff spring rate, I flipped the rebound around so it doesn't feel like a pogo stick and slowed up that with a little more on the stack for the rebound side. I like it. I ride with guys who have tripple in their set up between the new bike, custom suspension, air pro deal, custom controllers for their EFI maybe ignition (really no idea here) and then the Yeti kits. I weigh a lot more than they do and my bike seems to steer and work just as well. I am a little more spirited and I like hoping around and jumping off stuff...nothing too huge I guess but I love to drop little cornices and hop every old tree stump in sight....probably why I bent my tunnel sides to crap twice.

 

[dirtnerd]

I am surprised to hear that. I don't consider myself huge (210lbs) and don't consider myself a seasoned snowbiker.....but I constantly bottom out stock forks with the clickers wound in on any SB I've ever ridden. Even small jumps or bumps, even in powder. I guess if you never catch a creek wrong, or never come off the ground much it's ok....but you're still riding halfway through the travel the whole time.

I much prefer heavier springs....keeping in mind that most bikes are sprung for a 180lb (for dirt) rider out of the box. That said, haven't tried the extra oil thing or the airpro.

my buddy and I were discussing this and my curiousity is how much ski pressure do you have? We're waiting for the snow to fly to try some things out but a lot of what's happening up front seems to be either too stiff a rear end or too much ski pressure. Any chance you did some testing to see the effects?

 

[Jaynelson]

my buddy and I were discussing this and my curiousity is how much ski pressure do you have? We're waiting for the snow to fly to try some things out but a lot of what's happening up front seems to be either too stiff a rear end or too much ski pressure. Any chance you did some testing to see the effects?

Didn't think about it much at the time TBH, it was set up as per TS recommendations.... but in retrospect it probably had too much ski pressure. Rode it once, bottomed out a bunch and blew out the fork seals. Put stiff springs in it and it rode well, but I always thought it was a bit heavy on the nose. CRF450RX with an ARO 137.

A couple 500EXC's one with a 137, one with a 120. Ski pressure seemed about right, but fork was way too soft (keep in mind that bike has softer OEM suspension/springs than an SX bike). Stiff springs and it seemed happy. Jumped on some other misc bikes here and there as well.

Honestly there are people are people who've done way more tinkering and testing than me. I've just never ridden one with a stock fork yet that didn't bottom out like crazy....but there are some interesting ideas in this thread for sure.

 

[jeiner]

+1 for Brockstar performance forks.



My first ride on my 2016 TS LT the forks were slapping bottom everywhere I went. I sent off the forks and it made a huge difference. I didn't like the ride height, so I ended up putting a little air over the top using airpro (the largest spring rate for my bike was a .56). Never bottomed out again (that's a soft lie. I drilled a rock and hit my bars, 1 1/8", hard enough with my legs to roll them forward. Crazy I didn't bend my forks).



All that being said, I picked up a hold over bike this year (YZ450F 2017) and before having them re-done I was going to try heavier oil and air. We shall see!

 

[Norma Stitz]

Very interesting ideas here. I’d really like to know how much ski pressure different people have in their setups. I like the rear setting foot pegs idea as long as there is room for my feet before the tunnel.
Has anyone run little running platforms instead of pegs?

 

[powdermuncher]

This was my test setup 1/2 inch plate so 1/2 inch wider

The final version is also 1/2 inch lowered and almost 2" moved to the back.

I also run 2'' rox risers angled backwards at a 45 degree angle.

This works perfect with the aero kit

On my riding buddy's 2014 I made them out of 1" plate to move the pegs out

by a full 1" on each side.

 

[mtnthumper]

CMX

I'm assuming most of these posts are with timbersled/yeti/camso kits right? I can't wait to get tuning with this CMX and see how different it is. I'm starting out middle of the road on everything, so there is a ton of adjustments to make.

 

[eric82930]

I have not ridden or even seen a cmx kit on the snow but by the looks of it, it should have the least ski pressure when set up directly the track is far forward and the rear most spring force is rising rate so it doesn't have to be jacked super stiff to keep from bottoming.

 

[TYFOON]

This!

https://www.airprofork.com/snowbikes/snowbike-bottoming-kit

 

[tek9tim]

Very interesting ideas here. I’d really like to know how much ski pressure different people have in their setups. I like the rear setting foot pegs idea as long as there is room for my feet before the tunnel.
Has anyone run little running platforms instead of pegs?

I have two rides on my TS, so take this for what that's worth. I mounted my kit up on my Husky TE last spring, thinking the guy who had it before me had a KTM XC, but he had an XC-W. I didn't mess with the strut on the rear, and I had way too much ski pressure. Bottoming super easy. (Doesn't help that I have relatively plush off road valving on that bike) I found a thread on here titled 'Trenching', where some dude mentioned it's ideal to keep your fork angles between 58-62 degrees. 58 (strut longer) results in more ski pressure, 62 (strut shorter) results in less. So, I set mine up at 60, and the next ride was a lot better.

My real point is this: an easy correlation to ski pressure is fork leg angle (rake). You can measure it with a level app on your phone pretty easy, make adjustments, ride, evaluate, and have hard data to work off of.