This means that pedalling efficiency will be lower and the bike will tend to bob up and down unless platform damping is applied to the shock. As we know from Part I , anti-rise is a measure of how much the suspension compresses or extends due to the force of braking. Like anti-squat, anti-rise is also measured in percentages. The holy-grail of anti-rise under braking is to have enough to prevent suspension extension but not so much as to create excessive suspension compression.
Anti-rise is directly linked to the location of the suspension instant centre. We have shown four very different bikes with four very different suspension designs, each with their own characteristics and behaviour on the trail.
This allows designs to be engineered to balance the different properties in the pursuit of improved performance. Over these two parts, we hope you have enjoyed a deeper delve into suspension function and performance. Suspension design is an exercise in balance and compromise. Download the app for iOS or Android to read all articles on your tablet or smartphone.
Trevor loves adventure. Whisky, riding his bike and everything in between. Though he was born in England, he believes he should have been Scottish. Besides being accustomed to bad weather he's a specialist when it comes to steep and demanding trails.
Once, he was in love with competition and raced in the early years of the EWS, but now, at years-old, he no longer has anything to prove. Nonetheless, demonstrating that you can teach an old dog new tricks, he continues to hold his own against the wild and fearless youth. Together with his young family and two crazy dogs, you will almost always find him outdoors. Suspension properties are dynamic not static Before we dive into the four different suspension platforms, we must first accept that bike suspension is dynamic — the sum of many parts.
Tops Single-pivot suspension requires fewer bearings and needs less maintenance A simple design means that suspension characteristics are consistent, with smooth curves leading to predictability.
Flops The fixed instant centre leads to high relationships between suspension characteristics which can be undesirable at certain stages of travel.
Tops Linkage-driven Single-pivot suspension provides more freedom to fine-tune the leverage ratio to work in harmony with different shock-damper designs.
Flops More linkages mean more pivots and bearings, increasing maintenance The fixed instant centre means tuning anti-squat and anti-rise is just as limited as on a Single-pivot. Tops The rearward axle path of a High-Pivot design can help the suspension float over square-edged hit An idler dramatically reduces pedal kickback, resulting in a smoother feeling on the pedals The position of the idler can be used to fine-tune levels of anti-squat.
Flops The fixed instant centre means tuning anti-rise is just as limited as on a single-pivot The wheelbase of the bike extends under compression which can lead to unusual handling The idler increases complexity and most designs need extra links than a standard chain.
Tops Twin-link suspension provides designers with high tunability of all suspension characteristics Anti-squat and anti-rise are very consistent throughout the travel, designers argue over whether this is good or not. The riding position is upright and proved more comfortable the longer the ride. The bar is plenty wide, while the saddle is on the racer-firm side of comfort. The S-Works takes every watt of your power and turns it into forward momentum.
The carbon rims certainly help. And with the laterally rigid bottom-bracket area and carbon cranks, you can get up to speed fast with less effort.
Cornering: The S-Works inspires confidence immediately. The bottom bracket height feels lower than it measures, and the active suspension works great, allowing the bike to carve corners even when the terrain is chattery. The suspension remains active when needed. Small-bump compliance was a shocker. In the rough: Our loops are littered with sections that raise the adrenaline level and cannot always be cleaned while riding a 26er.
Not so on the S-Works. Whereas riders on smaller-wheeled bikes need to ride aggressively to stay on top of rocks, roots and ruts, the S-Works rider can remain in a comfort zone and still clear sections going either up or down a trail.
We had to get used to using a slightly larger gear than normal, because the S-Works allows you to. We had better success torqueing through sections than spinning through them. Climbing: Use the same trick as above. Go outside your comfort zone and push a slightly bigger gear. This bike will motor. Drop the fork travel?
We never did. Turn the fork to Climb mode? Again, we never did. Descending: Drop that saddle with a push on the remote lever and let it rip. We caught ourselves picking lines like we were riding a 26er, which is the wrong way to ride this bike.
The beauty of these wheels is you can get very creative with mixing rocks, ruts and obstacles into your line. No reason to avoid them. That means some of your pedal force is going into compressing the rear suspension, and simultaneously, that force is inhibiting a free rebound of your wheel. So a design like this cannot be fully active.
Front-to-back distance fork to bottom bracket changes when suspension is activated. The unified-linkage-suspension design suffers from the same basic limitations as the unified design see the explaination above for full details.
Pedals kick back when suspension is activated. On a high-pivot design, any time that the pivot is above the chainline, you have a significant affect when you put force on the pedals. It causes the suspension to want to top out.
When that's the case, some of your pedal force is going into moving the suspension, rather than moving you forward, and it's inhibiting your rear suspension from compressing in a free way.
So it's not an active design and it's not giving you the maximum benefit that it could. Also, as you're hitting bumps, the suspension motion is causing your pedal stroke to be disrupted.
From talking to people that have spent some time on a Jedi, it also sounds like the rearward axle path takes a bit of getting used to in hard corners — as the bike compresses into the corner, the rear end gets significantly longer, which might feel weird to someone coming off of a bike that keeps the rear end relatively short throughout its travel.
On the upside, this makes dealing with pedaling forces a lot easier. The Jedi is a very unique bike in all the ways you mentioned, especially radical rearward wheel path. With all the suspension designs and media hype,you really need to demo different designs on trails you like to ride. I am looking at the Mission 2 but not sure if this old technology, or if its worth the discounted price?
At its heart, the Diamondback knucklebox design is a linkage driven single pivot like the Kona pictured in the article. The rocker arm is in a different place than on the Konas, and I would assume that the suspension action might feel a bit different, but in terms of the basic upsides and downsides of the design, it definitely still falls into that linkage driven single pivot category.
Incidentally, the older Diamondbacks that had a more triangular linkage piece and a vertical shock orientation also fall into that same category. This can help the bike roll over square hits more efficiently, but makes things tricky when dealing with pedaling forces. The Jeffsy uses this same linkage layout, but the Tues drives the shock off of the swing link.
That difference really just come down to what the company is trying to achieve with their leverage ratios for each bike. Noah, The longest running thread!!
Thanks for all these amazing explanations. Very thorough. How different or same is the Niner CVA suspension from these others. Can you kindly shed some light on the pros and cons of these two? The exact link layouts are a little different though. The Niner CVA bears some basic similarities in terms of link layout to the Giant Maestro design the lower link on the Maestro is above the bottom bracket, while the CVA is below, and both designs are using links that are a bit longer than DW link bikes.
While the exact traits are going to vary quite a bit from bike to bike, my experience has been that the Niners tend to pedal fairly efficiently, and have slightly better small bump sensitivity than some of the DW link bikes. The APS design also ends up with fairly similar pedaling characteristics and leverage ratios as some DW link bikes. Just chiming in to say I learned more about suspension from this article and the comments by Noah than from several sites I have been to.
I am currently looking for my first full suspension, mid travel bike in the 3k range, and truly appreciated this page. I want to have a solid understanding of bikes before I buy, and this has helped clear up the muddy water where each manufacturer has the best suspension… according to them. Thanks again!! I was looking at the Motobecane Hal6 from bikesdirect. Would that be a DW link suspension? Any thoughts or feedback would be appreciated. The reviews seem to be pretty good but I know a lot of technology goes into proper frame design.
Thanks for the good article to help me as a consumer be informed with my next purchase. I have a GT i-Drive and it has held up great all this time. I am thinking about a new bike so I went to all the bike shops around. I rode Scott spark , Trek fuel ex7, specialized camber lowest spec and a yeti sb 4. Granted I just rode around the sidewalks and played around on the curbs and stuff but all the bikes felt like they were bending in at the bb when I stood up and bounced my weight on them and also pedaling hard.
That is except for the yeti. Is this a matter of those bikes being around 2K and the yeti at 5K or is it their design?
I could be just used to riding it all these years, but it felt better with the old spring shock and mechanical Judy c fork. Hi What kind of linkage would my sunn charger S2 be? Suspension Basic Designs We covered some basic concepts and definitions in our first Suspension article , so you should now know the difference between a full suspension and a hardtail, and you should have a pretty good sense of the amount of travel you want in your bike.
Suspension Design — Forks Most suspension forks have a fundamentally similar design these days. More discussion of the various parts of the fork will come next week. There are basically three goals of rear suspension: 1 The suspension needs to do a good job of absorbing bumps. Cons: The suspension gives noticeable feedback in the pedals; not great under braking.
Pros: Decent bump compliance; no patents on the design and therefore less expensive to build. Cons: Not an efficient pedaler; some braking feedback. Kona Satori with linkage driven single pivot.
Pros: Good bump compliance; good under braking. Cons: Not a very efficient pedaler. Specialized Enduro with FSR link. Pros: Pedals well; does well under braking. Pivot Firebird with DW link. Pros: pedals well; does well under braking. Cons: Still not a particularly efficient pedaler; patented design costs a bit more.
Trek Fuel with ABP suspension. How about the KS link on a Banshee? Is that a VPP? I found the information here very helpful so Thank you sir. Hey Joshua, You can talk to ten different engineers and get ten different answers about which designs are best for the various disciplines of the sport.
Thank you for the reply Noah. Noah Thanks again for the replies! How does it work?
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