i updated my ibis mojo HD from the fox kashima rp23 to a New Cane creek db air cs. took it out this morning and it handled great. Very pleased. seems to have more traction when climbing and handles the rough stuff amazing well worth the weight. i may keep my ibis now anyone have some secret tune settings? I'm 185 geared up
running the dbacs on my mojo hdr 26. I like the settings they give. Really stiff allowing it to absorb bigger hits. Enjoy!
CCDB-Air Tuning compliments of Knolly's Noel Buckley... A "cut & paste" from MTBR Knolly forum... A bit of a warning: if you’re looking for a quick tuning fix, you won’t find it here. However, if you’re looking to really understand your shock and how to translate this into performance, then read on! With Chilcotins hitting the market and a large number of CCDB-Air shocks being equipped on these frames, it would be good to get some more extensive tuning experience out publicly. This is a great shock, but it's fairly different than anything that's been on the market before and I think there is going to be a bit of confusion on how to set these shocks up. There are already reports online about excessive progressiveness or weird air spring curves: I can pretty much guarantee that outside of some extremely rare "bad combinations" (i.e. where a particular shock's air spring does NOT play well together with the frame's shock rate) most of these reports are based on set up issues. This shock is extremely tunable and the one challenge with the CCDB-Coil (getting yourself into a terribly tuned situation) is certainly possible on with the CCDB-Air and possibly even more so due to the increase in variables to tune. That being said, the CCDB-Air offers a unique take on air suspension compared to products that currently exist on the market, one that customers who put pure suspension performance first while maintaining a reasonable weight and / or shock set up profile will likely really enjoy. Some back ground information.... We have been fortunate at Knolly to have had exposure to this shock for close to two years now, and have been playing with some of the earliest prototypes available for well over a year. This has given us a fair bit of time to see both how the shock has developed physically and also to get a fair bit of on trail experience with the shock on the Chilcotin, Delirium and Podium frames. So, the first question is (before even considering tuning this shock): "Is this the right product for me?" This question is a difficult one and it's also why the CCDB-Air is not the only shock that we sell with the Chilcotin frame. We pick our frame shock choices carefully, based on performance, reliability, customer input, manufacturer support, availability and again, performance. We aim to spec the right shock and don't play games like using the smallest air can possible to shave another 40 grams off of the frame. We work with our shock vendors to ensure that the shock's performance is as dialed as it can be for each frame that we make. This is why we offer 3 shock options for the Chilcotin: the RP23 (HV can), the CCDB-Air and the CCDB-Coil. The fact is that for a large percentage of our customers, the RP23 will be the best shock choice: it's lightweight, reliable, works really well in almost situations, can be ridden surprisingly aggressively and is very easy to setup. What customers don't realize is that we work with Fox to develop a specific tune setting: there are a half dozen internally adjustable settings on the RP23 shock, each of which we tune to where we think the shock will provide the best overall performance for the vast majority of customers. However, there is no way for end users to tune most of these settings: you need to work with a Fox approved service centre. The CCDB shocks are the opposite: adjustments similar to the RP23's internal settings are available on the CCDB shocks externally and just as you could get less than ideal performance with an incorrectly factory tuned RP23 shock, you - the end user - can do exactly this with the CCDB shocks because you can adjust those settings to any setting you desire (or don't desire!). Wow - that was a bit of a run on sentence. Essentially, the CCDB gives you the ability to achieve a custom tune: the trick is making sure that this custom tune is the correct tune. Anyway, the point here is that when adjusting CCDB shocks, it helps to understand what you are doing for real, as opposed to thinking you know what you're doing but in reality just guessing. This post hence becomes a bit of a philosophical approach on how to tune the CCDB-Air shock, instead of a “just give me the information I want so that I can turn some dials and get the exact performance that I want”. Who is the ideal CCDB customer? Someone that wants the ultimate in “on trail” suspension performance. Someone who wants to spend the time to get the shock set up correctly. Someone who will notice when they get bucked slightly (or not so slightly) when the terrain they’re riding overcomes a different shock’s ability to cope. And, someone who is not overly concerned with having a shock that you can lock out to make the bike pedal like a hardtail on the pavement (we are talking about Chilcotins here, not hardtail 29ers ). On to CCDB-Air tuning and setup… The first thing to realize is that there are TWO main ideas that need to be understood to successfully tune this shock. 1) The Air Spring and how sag will affect your bike’s stature 2) Damping control and how to tune this by using the method of Bi-section (more about this later on). Understanding both of these key components will drastically help reduce the time required to tune this shock and ensure that you arrive at the best tune for you and your riding needs. 1) The Air Spring: Understanding how an air spring works and why it’s different than a coil spring is important. The first thing is that an air spring is infinitely variable. That means that unlike a coil spring where you’re working with fixed increments of spring rate (i.e. 350#, 400#, 450#, etc…) you can have any spring rate you want in an air spring shock. With a coil shock you get the correct spring rate based on a sag measurement: once you have the correct coil spring installed on the shock, then you tune everything around that coil spring. The second thing is that air springs are naturally progressive and hence can develop really good bottom out resistance, but some times at the expense of mid stroke support. With an air spring, the challenge becomes that you can tweak that air spring curve. For example, say that with a CCDB-coil, you used a 400# spring. For the CCDB-Air, this might translate into a 130 PSI pressure range. With the coil spring, you are limited to 400#: you can’t have 410# or 385#, only 400#. However, with an air spring you CAN have these in between spring rates, and this can make things more complicated because if you change the air spring pressure by even 5psi, you will notice this on the trail. How do you find the correct air spring pressure? Well, unfortunately IMHO, sag settings will get you about 90% of the way there, but not 100% of the way there. You’ll only get that last 10% with on trail testing. Also, different riders will have different ideas of how much sag they want; some will be down at 32% and others up to 35% and while that doesn’t sound like a lot of difference, it will be a lot when on the trail. To set the air spring pressure, start off with around 33% sag. This will get you reasonably close to your desired air spring rate. Now, how to get this actually dialed in, will take some on bike time (yeah!). I would recommend using relatively benign trails to start: somewhere where you can keep the bike level and get a feel for the bike’s stature and balance. This shock can be active, so it will take you a few rides to figure this out. You should find that when pedaling on reasonably level terrain (and I don’t mean flat – it can be technical, I just don’t mean climbing or descending) your bike feels balanced. If it feels like the back end is riding too high, then perhaps drop the pressure a tiny bit. If it feels like the bike is too slack (and you’ll notice this due to “floppy steering” and a lack of ground clearance), then add pressure. With your initial 33% sag setting you should be pretty close already: make small changes – 5 psi maximum at a time – and don’t change any other settings. Getting the correct spring rate is a bit of a feeling the bike out game: you'll figure it out eventually: the bike should ride level on flat terrain (too much pressure will obviously make the bike feel steep on the flats and too little pressure will make it feel like it's sagging on the climbs). The CCDB-Air spring curve has good midstroke support, so even though it doesn't have lock out for climbing, it will ride a little higher than the RP23 when climbing which does offset this slightly. Personally, I'm about 215 nekkid and I was initially using around 145 - 155 psi and ended up around the latter. At about 180 lbs body weight, you will probably be in the 135 psi range. So, once you have the air spring set reasonably well, LEAVE IT THERE. This will be tough to do, but trust me on this – at least at the start 2) On to tuning the damper settings. The next thing to understand is the Method of Bisection. This is important and will make your life way easier when tuning this shock! While it may seem complicated to start with, it will be well worth adopting this philosophy as it will make tuning suspension much more methodical and ultimately get you to the best suspension tune possible. Essentially you will start with your damper fully open and ride the bike. Then, you will fully close the damper and ride again. Obviously these settings will be WAY off, but you’ll get a feel for the extremes of the adjustment range. The idea is to go back to the “almost fully open” position, then again, to the “almost fully closed” position. You’ll work back and forth away from the end points and will eventually arrive at the desired setting. The drawing below gives you a pictorial idea of how to go about doing this. (thanks to who ever created this excellent drawing!) Now it’s time to get started! When tuning the CCDB Air the first time - to be honest - I found it quite tricky until I figured it out a bit. The issue is that because the shock has such GOOD inherent bottom out resistance (due to the progressiveness of the air spring, plus the shock’s excellent bottom out resistance), I kept reducing High Speed Compression until the shock was fully open. I thought that I still had too much HSC because the shock wouldn't bottom out. However what I was doing to blasting through the travel without any HSC and then hitting the shock's inherent bottom out without noticing it. So, follow the sequence below to get started: LSC = Low Speed Compression HSC = High Speed Compression LSR = Low Speed Rebound HSR = High Speed Rebound • Fully open up LSC & HSC: I would stick LSR & HSR at their mid settings for right now, unless those are terrible for you (we'll tune them later): now the work comes in I generally consider HSC the easiest setting to tune: find a small jump - bigger than a curb, but it doesn't have to be huge: about 2 - 4' is probably about right. It should be big enough that you can cycle the shock through all of its travel. Start with HSC totally open and hit the jump: you should feel like the bike doesn't have enough travel, that it seems to reach the end of its travel quickly. Now, fully close HSC and hit the jump again. You'll have a different feeling, which is that you can't use all of the travel. So, to recap: no HSC (under damped) = feels like not enough travel, and full HSC (over damped) = feels like you can't use all of the travel. So, now what you should do is go back to almost fully open HSC and hit the jump again. Then, set the HSC to almost fully closed and hit the jump. You're going to zone in to the ideal setting by going between over damped and under damped settings. Again, this is called the method of bisection and will help you find the ideal range for HSC. • LSC: this one's a little more subtle to tune, because certain aspects won't be immediately apparent. You'll obviously want enough LSC to have the bike pedal well, but not too much to affect handling or suspension suppleness. Where I found too much LSC affected handling were in the following scenarios: a) Hard to manual bike (i.e. when climbing fire roads and having to cross water ditches); b) loss of traction / suppleness on loose / rapid hit terrain. Too little LSC and of course the bike may have more pedal feed back. • LSR: this is akin to "regular rebound" on most single rebound adjuster shocks. Set it so that your suspension's not too active, but not slow enough that it packs up on chatter / braking bumps, loose chop, etc... This is probably the damper setting that has the most variation between different riders: after demo bikes we see that more novice –or hesitant - customers tend to use a LOT of rebound, whereas customers who are used to riding quickly and actively on the bike will generally use a lot less LSR damping. Ultimately, each customer will find a setting that is in tune with their ability and local terrain, but in general people use more of this than required. • HSR: this is possibly the hardest damper setting to tune accurately as it’s not always obvious and most customers (especially those new to the CCDB shocks) won’t have experience tuning this setting. The differences in your suspension’s performance are also generally not immediately obvious when adjusting the HSR as well (it is truly an “on trail” feel), contributing to the difficulty in tuning this. HSR controls how the bike reacts to sudden un-weighting of the rear suspension. This most often happens when hitting a jump and all of a sudden the bike’s rear shock goes from a fairly compressed state to a completely topped out position almost instantaneously. Too little HSR will lead to the dreaded “bucking” feeling when hitting lips on jumps, causing the front of the bike to nose dive. Too little HSR can also lead to bucking on hard landings, again where the bike will unload and want to pitch you forwards over the handle bar. Conversely too much HSR can make the bike feel “dead” when jumping. And, while lots of HSR could be nice when landing big drops, being over damped will make the bike land solidly, but not be ready for the next impact, making maintaining control difficult. Ultimately HSC and HSR are easiest to test when hitting jumps / drops and such, where as LSC and LSR are more "on the trail" kind of adjustments. Also, remember that changing the air pressure will affect things like HSC slightly, so best to get the air spring dialed in a quickly as possible, then tune the shock, then fine tune the airspring, followed by fine tuning the damper settings. Hope that helps - cheers! Last edited by knollybikes.com; 06-09-2012 at 12:41 AM.Noel Buckley ------------------ www.knollybikes.com
Dig around a little Keep in mind the above dissertation (mostly written by Noel Buckley) is two years old, prior to the climb switch. Most of it I am sure still applies, but in the two years hence, there should be a wealth of information and maybe even some base tunes established for the Mojo HD. I used the base tune suggested by Cane Creek for my 2013 Podium, and haven't needed to twiddle a single knob. Butttaahhhh... Here's a base tune for the HDR650/Mojo SL - It may serve as a starting point, or compare it to the HDR 160 base tune and see how much it differs. They don't have a base tune suggestion for the HD specifically...
