Phil's Articles

SETTING UP A BIKE

It's all about the balance. It's how the bike chassis splits the rider's weight between the front and rear tires. Too much weight on the rear tire and the front tire pushes in the turns and gives the bike a heavy feel. If you have too much weight on the front tire, the bike is twitchy and unstable. This is the reason that there is a measurement called "trail". Usually if you set the chassis at the factory recommended height and set the race sag correctly, the trail numbers will be good and the bike will be balanced.

Now you have to set the suspension adjusters to stabilize the chassis. If you forget what you read easily, then try to remember these two things: compression is the performance side and rebound is the comfort side of suspension.

Let me explain it better...

Compression keeps the forks from diving too much under braking and it keeps the rear from squatting under acceleration.

Rebound disconnects the wheels from the chassis and allows the tires to roll over the bumps without pulling the chassis down with it.

These two forces, compression and rebound, affect the trail numbers dynamically and can cause the bike to be either quick- or slow-steering at different speeds. The point of a race sag measurement is to mechanically set the geometry of the chassis. The suspension dynamically keeps the geometry stable under all conditions.

That is the point of a set up: to optimize the chassis to make it as easy as possible to ride!