Is Bottoming Out Bad For Your Bike? We Ask The Experts

I service my own fork and rear shock-small service. I have discussed with few fox services and they told me that occasionally bottoming out is not big deal but constant bottoming out can damage your suspension. Also constant bottoming out put aditional unnecessary stress to your frame.

Bottom out by smoothly using all the travel: 😊 Bottom out by absolutely clanking the bottom: ☠️

I recently started making my own dampers and air spring, on the damper side I have my two opposed shim stacks with a convex spring mounted conical valve in the center of the stack that will push all the shims closed in case fluid is pushed too hard too fast; combined with the air spring rubber bumper bottoming out is a smooth experience. *Edit. Finding the right shim numbers and size of the stack was a task but conical valve sizing was the worst, opening up and grinding a bit, switching spring rates, at least 30 times... 😅 Might no be worth it for everyone

Glad you got the Teaboy out to chat. No wonder Sprung always maintains getting your sag right from the get go, otherwise all bets are off. Had the bike quickly fettled by them during FoD fest, where small things such as declining the levers by a few more degrees to get yoru weight better distributed on descents was somewhat critical.

It's better to bottom every now and then, than to not use your full travel in fear of bottoming out

15.10 wow.. The chain actually hit the ground.

Playing with sag can give you a whole new bike, when I made my 2016 Nomad into a Mullet with a 29'er fork and wheel, I had to put way more pressure in the rear to compensate for the change in angle/force to the rear shock. It's a 170mm enduro monster at near 30% sag, and an awesome XC bike at 20+% sag. best of both worlds, I love it to bits

Great video! 💯 You should change the title though, because the video covers so much more than bottoming out.

Using all suspension should not be a goal. The goal should be to have a setup that feels right - A setup that you trust. Which ever amount of travel you end up using is irrelevant. Personally I like the suspension to sit higher in its travel so the typical working range is higher up as well as less total change in geometry. It should feel efficient without chucking you all over the place. The most important thing is that you feel that it's working for you personally so that you can trust it.

I had to do a complete rebuild of my Rockshox Boxxer Ultimate because i went too long in a drop and also nose heavy...

5:10 Trophy Trucks use hydraulic bump stops not leverage rate changing linkages

I don't care about sag or bottom out. I just tune the suspension so it works best for me. I can count the occasion my forks ever bottomed out on one hand, only when i took some unexpected brutal hit. On a normal ride I usually got 20-30mm oft 170mm travel left. On the shock i don't even know but i didn't ever head or feel it bottoming out.

I paid for the whole travel, I am gonna use the whole travel (c) Seriously though, if bottoming out hurts the fork/damper it is an incorrectly designed fork/damper.

Well the amount of new videos been put up of people landing and their Fox 38s snapping at the base of the arch and shooting the damper out and Rock shox snapping from the crown and face planting I'd say yeah! The Fox 38 video's crazy guy bunnyhops in carpark test and they fail catastrophically! Same forks I have so abit concerned now 😂

Haven’t watched the video yet. But I just run my suspension on the edge of bottoming out. Then on the odd ocassion on something super big I do bottom out fully. I do run 3 tokens tho

95kg with no kit on and I have 28% sag on rear, 2 tokens, 2 bands on my RS ultimate and I'm trying 1token and 20% sag on my lyriks instead of 2 tokens and 15% sag. I'm Probably gonna try 1.5 tokens and 18% as 1 token and 20% felt to soft and dived to much on steep tech. Especially when braking.

8.31 can you tell me whare the spacer came from under the stem please? Exactly what I'm looking for as have same headset shape but put the new Funn Eq v2 stem on it I need that to make it look nice and flush at the bottom cheers

Bottoming out your fork may be hazardous to your dental health. 😉😬😆

So if youre not bottoming out a 150 fork then youre essentially riding a what...130? With the added benefit of higher stack.

Had to rewatch the volume spacer part of this video. I am 90+ kg and my tuner said to add volume spacers on my xc fork. I was confused why you would do the same thing for someone super light. Makes sense though. It is not that light riders and heavy riders have the same soloution to the same problem, it is that they have two different problems that can be solved with the same thing....