July 9, 2013, 9:20 p.m. -  Orb

#!markdown Cheez1ts, I think what you had setup work for you. The comment I made is not without merit or understanding. Reducing sag affects the ability of the wheel to follow the ground. Load change at the wheel become more abrupt and traction and weight balance is affected. An example, after you hit bump and shock is on the rebound stroke the wheel will track down the back side of the bump if there is enough sag (droop travel). If there is not enough sag then the wheel will drop down to bottom of the next bump while losing contact to the ground at the same time. The wheel that is following the ground will load up the suspension more smoothly and maintain excellent tracking and traction. The wheel that loses contact with the ground will transfer weight to other wheel (the weight balance will move to the other wheel unless you compensated). When the wheel does make contact the suspension will load more abruptly which reduces tracking and traction. The flip side of this at 15% sage both sides is you gain 1.05” of the rear and 0.45” front vertical over a conventional setup f 20: r30 sag. Bottom line, the ability for the rider to compensate for these changes is much bigger part then the suspension itself. Generally, the smoother things are and the less rider compensation the faster one will be but that is debunked all the time and why it can be difficult to tune MTB suspension. FYI, adding more spring preload to the spring by reducing sag or increasing damping does not increase stiffness in any way. It does increase the load to move the spring and damping only changes the rate of load. If some tell you other then ask why.