RSR Bikeworks, Data Acquisition day/review

[weeksy]

With a looming trip to Morzine me and a mate were at FoD last weekend and chatting with Rich Simpson who owns/runs RSR Bikeworks. We've known rich for a few years now and had the boys bikes done once upon a time and really gelled with him and his setups.
Anyway i was chatting and saying "i wouldn't mind getting my Status 160 done" where @Weeksy08 laughed and sniggered. But Rich thought at any level a decently setup bike is better

So we booked it in and had it tweaked.

IMG_20240801_120927 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

IMG_20240801_120918 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

IMG_20240801_120923 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

It starts with attaching some electrical gubbins to the bike that does the measuring, that's all directed into a phone app which is configured with various parameters to get your setup.
Consistency is key for the setup so we used the same trail for every run. It's a trail we locally know as "sharkfin" from one of the features. But it's fast, flowy, jumpy, rooty, pretty much everything we wanted in a trail and a trail i know well. It's not as techy/gnar as some i may ride, but it's closer to what i ride most than they are.

First was setting the sag and we were slightly thrown by the shaft on the Fox Float X which is a 60mm stroke.. When we looked at the data for the sag it was showing a lot more than it looked. It turned out that the shaft is a 60-65mm shaft and the stroke is adjusted internally, so when it was at a sag of say 45% it looked a lot different. I was running 215psi in the back and 80psi in the Fox 36 on the front and i've always really liked it.

Rich noticed that 210 was as i say above nearly 45% sag and we started upping the rear pressure to get to a sensible figure, in the end we settled at 260psi... year really, that much of a difference. I thought it'd feel horrid on the trail and i was pleasantly surprised. A couple of runs and we changed a click here and there, then removed a volume spacer from the forks, then changed the pressure down in the forks to 77 and added a volume spacer, then back out, then some more air here and there...

In the end we reached the point where it was too much and i was feeling the back end chattering on the root section, which really pleased me that i noticed as i don't see 'feel' as being my strong point. We then dialled the rebound back slightly and the final run was honestly the best run i'd had on the trail in hundreds of runs. I guess it helped that Rich is also a National level DH racer and ex-GB Champion in BMX, so with him and the boy chasing me (or getting bored) i had to bring my A game.
But the back of the bike felt SO much more planted and stable in the corners with the higher pressures and the root section i was going through like it didn't exist now.
We were working on a particular right hander which i'd been struggling on all day and braking too hard into it, nearly stalling and holding them up, on the last run i let myself go in a fraction slower and carried more corner speed through it, popping me out WAY nicer.

I wasn't clearing the final gap/table/jump, but i never have and i wasn't doing badly on it actually lol.

A big chunk of the process wasn't just the bike, but as much about picking his brain and learning a bit for weeksy08 in terms of when he comes in with "oh the bike feels a little XYZ" then i can arguably have a little more knowledge about what we may think about adding/losing a click of here or there and why

All in all i felt it was time and money really well spent, not only because i have a bike that feels awesome now and i like even more than i did befoe i started, but because i've learned a fair bit about the process and suspension in the process. I've also learned that despite me thinking i have no feel of what a bike is doing, i may actually have some.

[mboy]

Interesting to hear your take on the process... I'm intrigued myself I must say, though don't know what value I'd get out of it as a) I'm really only just getting back into riding as it is from a long lay off and b) I'm pretty au fait with suspension adjustment and how I like things to feel, if not quite pulling them apart and changing things internally myself (but I have a man only a few miles away who I fully trust to do that for me anyway).

What was your shock stroke measuring with a ruler/tape measure for sag? Running the same shock on my Orbea Wild with similar travel, and was quite surprised when I ended up running well over 250psi (can't remember just now, its been weeks since I set it up, but was a lot closer to 300psi than 200) to get my preferred 25ish % sag on the rear... Or did you just put some air in it and go ride initially?

What has shocked me more is the pressures required in my Fox 38 with a Runt cartridge in... It's a 160mm version so pressures need to be higher than with a longer travel fork, but also cos it's a narrower bore air chamber than on the 36 (ironically!) I am running 90psi in the main chamber and 180psi in the secondary (for a solo chamber equivalent of 135psi!) to get enough support and still running at approx 25% sag too...

And apologies if rude, but what did he charge for the service? Obviously it was of great value to you so the cost is arbitrary to a degree, I'm just trying to gauge where he sits amongst those I have now seen offering this service as prices do seem to vary quite wildly...

[weeksy]

Well initially i wasn't using a measurement for sag, i was eyeballing it and going on feel, but it seems it was about 30mm. Which is 50% of the stroke. I've owned the bike for 6+months now and ran it like this for the whole of it.

The front end is running the 36s and was 80psi starting and finished on 77psi at the end of the ride, so that was pretty closely setup initially.

The cost was £150. He's usually £250-300 but we didn't do a full day and it was fairly local to him rather than a 2 hour drive each way. I don't think if you'd asked me in advance to pay £300 i'd have felt it worthwhile for myself, but now i've been through the process, well, maybe. We as MTBers spend a lot more money on a lot less important things that arguably make less difference overall anyway.
He does 2-1 or 1-1 as he has multiple sets of kit to get data from which also keeps the cost down.

I'd also been debating buying a Status 170 as you may have seen, so was debating "is it worth it if swapping" but the reality is, the bike is awesome and staying, so was worth getting the job done right.

[Beancounter]

I've been wondering about suspension set up on the mountain bike. Got the motorbikes set up but always seem to talk myself out of it on the mountain bike, more so because the bike 7 years old now and I'm not sure if it's worth tuning the bouncy bits (RS Yari RL on the front and RS Deluxe RL on the back). See - talking myself out of it already despite having looked at RSR website and thinking £150 is a reasonable price for the service.

[weeksy]

My bouncy bits are fairly basic in terms of adjustment, only rebound and either volume spacers or air capacity, so no LSC/LSR etc... But i thought "why the heck not" and currently i'm very happy.

I'm curious as to how it'll ride on the tamer more local stuff rather than 'trails' but arguably the trails stuff is of more importance to me.