How much travel?

Question for the group. My FS bike is a '14 Trek Fuel EX-8 29er. I've upgraded the fork to the fit dampner and the rear shock to a Reaktiv. The bike is great, climbs like a goat, handles pretty much everything I throw at it down hill(but I'm slow).

The Fuel has 120mm of travel, front and rear. In the "more is always better" thought process, and the "grass is always greener", I often wonder if I'd like more travel. 140mm-150mm sounds about right.

I have fun on the Fuel and my hardtails, so I don't really need more travel, and just adjust my riding style to the kind of bike I'm on.

So, now back to the question part of the post. We all ride pretty much the same type of terrain in So Cal, how much travel do you run? Does it feel right to you or do you want more or less?

 

I reject your premise that we all ride pretty much the same type of terrain in SoCal. At least half of the active posters on this forum seek long fire-road grinds as their primary terrain, and pretty much descend the same. That type of riding does not require (nor do those riders seem to crave) a lot of suspension. Others ride a good amount of slow but challenging chunk. Some like fast, rough descents.

So the real question is, what problem are you trying to solve? Upgraditis? Curiosity? Your self-reported DH slowness?

I tend to overfork my bikes - that is, I like more travel in front with a beefier fork than the one that is spec'd for the bike. I like the slacker head angle and the snowplow confidence that a beefy fork provides. But you would have to go back to "the reason I ride" to understand why that matters to me.

If you feel you must drop $800-$1000 to experiment, then go for it. Slap a 140mm travel on the front and see if you like it. Make sure you are getting at least 34mm stanchions. Maybe get a gently used fork, or a closeout special to cut that cost in half. That said, a poorly tuned 140mm vs your ultra-trick 120mm wouldn't be a fair comparison, other than checking out what the slacker head angle feels like. I would definitely not go any more than 140. 20mm increase in axle-to-crown is a full degree of head angle.

One more thought - are you using all of the 4.75" of suspension you have now? Most people run their forks too stiff and only use half.

 

I def don't want more, but I'm an odd throwback case... current bike is 180mm rear (that can be changed to 200). Honestly tho, I got it because, at the time, it had the geo I was looking for, low and slack, that few others had on a fairly pedal-able frame. You can now get that kind of geo (65-66* HA and low 13s BB) on a shorter travel frame that is prob a bit better for pedalling. Mine is actually pretty decent on pedaling as long as you stay seated, if you stand up it becomes a gallop-er. And it aint light either at 32.5lbs. I will prob go to a shorter travel (150-160) but same/close geo bike in the future, that's a little lighter.

To sum it up, IMO find the geo you like and and then look at the travel options. Shorter travel is more likely to pedal better and be lighter, longer better for big hits or cush for old bones like mine. My 2cents.

 

No real agenda here, more curious than anything. If there is something I'd like to improve in my riding, it is going down. But, I would probably benefit more from practice and honing my descending skills(and increasing the size of a certain body part) than having a bike with more travel. I went back and forth between the Remedy and the Fuel when I made my purchase last year. Since I got the Fuel, I am always wondering if I would have liked the Remedy better on the descents. I'm sure if I bought the Remedy, I'd be wondering if the Fuel would have been a better climber.

 

Hey, pper,

You should demo some bikes to get a feel for how well longer travel bikes climb. I say climb versus descend because that's normally where a compromise would be perceived. You know that you can go faster with greater control with more travel, that's a given.

I had a couple of short travel 29ers and loved them. But at a point of loving technical riding and descending, I was eventually limited by those bikes. I ended up with a 150mm travel 27.5 bike, which I'm continually assured was the right move. I'm sure some of the newer trail-oriented 120-130mm 29ers would fare better than the ones I owned, fwiw. No more itchy arm (as the wife says) slamming through rough terrain. BTW, she went from 4 to 5 inches of FS travel and has no regret. Also, I can't underplay what knuckles wrote about frame geo. Most current bikes in the travel you're looking at will have fairly trail-oriented geo, but it's good to know what some of the numbers are to help compare.

As always, it's the rider, not the bike. But, having a cheater bike can give an advantage and get you on a fun path to developing your skills. You can try my Bronson if you join me for a ride or part of a ride. That will be a pretty decent point of reference at least. Cheers...

 

There is no do everything bike. I see people sell bikes and get another bike only to learn that it is better to have the right tool for the right job. Modern enduro bikes are as close to a do everything bike as you will get.

 

Got to say I love my Yeti AS-R 5c! R stands for Race, 5 stands for 5 inches of beautiful squish, and "c" stands for a Carbon frame weighing in at 4.75 lbs. An aggressive trail bike, it was known as the "cheater bike" at Yeti.
http://www.pinkbike.com/news/yeti-asr5-carbon-test-2011.html

Climbs amazing and descends the same. My point? I think Yeti gets it right meaning 140mm is a great climb descend combo.

Your description sounds a lot like my requirements, so these are my thoughts, imho....

 

Technically, a small increase in the amount of travel doesn't make a bike more capable. When you sag a suspension fork to a certain %, you also effectively set the amount of force it takes to compress to be comparable to if you had a shorter travel or longer travel fork. If you get 75% travel on one hit on a shorter travel fork and ride fork with 50% more travel sagged to the same amount and go out to experience the same hit, it will likely also use 75% of its travel. The difference lies in how much travel that 75% travel uses up (75% of 160 is 120mm, while 75% of 100 is 75mm); in other words, you dive more, bob more, ride higher and sink deeper, etc. with a longer travel fork. There may be a performance difference if the tune has changed, where they perhaps don't design in more pedaling efficiency, design in more bottom out resistance, increase stiffness of the chassis, or have a different air spring rate curve. There used to be Fox 32s in 150-160 not too long ago (3-4 years ago) on AM bikes, like the Pivot Mach 5.7 and Stumpjumper FSR, which demonstrated this well enough. Basically, I'm just trying to say that it's not the amount of travel that makes the bike.

There is the trendy belief that bikes perceived as less fragile/flimsy tend to be considered more capable of rougher stuff. They could very well just be stiff, brittle, and less forgiving, but "accurate" (in a straightforward predictable manner). A bike with designed in flex (often marketed as "ride tuning") will be forgiving, elastic, and can contour itself to the ground a bit better. Forgiveness in this case not only refers to "comfort", but also how it responds to poor rider input, with an unforgiving bike doing what you say (including tense panicked inputs), even though that leads to a crash. People seem to not see flex as an desirable trait in some cases, doing something they believe that they don't want. It's more of a trust/confidence thing, where the rider just doesn't trust the less stiff bike, even though the result is that it survives and made it through the same section, no worse than the stiffer bike. If you can ride through a section with a looser body and cruise through letting the bike do the work, is that worse than doing it all yourself, pumping the ground furiously?

What makes a bike overkill often is "deadening the trail". This generally involves damping tuned for the purpose of absorbing a high % of surface irregularities in the trail. When you perceive a trail as almost smooth and effortless to ride, it becomes too easy and boring. The damping also removes bounciness/springiness, which is akin to removing liveliness. It's more fun when there's still challenge and there's some clear feedback to tell you just how demanding something is, besides from your body. If something's too easy, you can often increase the challenge by going faster, but that can increase the risk of bad injury, especially if you're unaccustomed to such speeds. This is an ironic case, where being too good is the problem.

Balanced, versatile bikes are keepers. It's sad to see people replace them when they wear out a few parts, reasoning they might as well replace everything else. When it comes to big name brand bikes, even the racers listen and trust the designers and engineers to make a better bike. If you liked that Trek when you first got it, it probably can be fixed up with a bit of maintenance by a trustworthy and experienced mechanic that will give it the TLC it needs. Hard to find a crappy bike these days, but when you do it either has maintenance/setup issues, or just is loaded with parts that are look-alikes/replicas of the properly engineered parts that are actually purposely designed to do the job expected of them (susp, tires, and wheels, and sometimes brakes tend to be the usual suspects). I'm guilty of it... I thought I found my match when I got my 26 Stumpjumper FSR EVO, but I went back to 29er wheels and haven't found one I liked as much overall yet, usually due to bad fit, though the E29 would've been it if it weren't for the tall front end.

Summed up, quality over quantity. There's so much potential fun in having a lightweight, fast, responsive, and lively bike. You're likely to compromise that with a change, that mainly only results in a new short-term thrilling experience, which may have some desirable nature to it, but only leads to excess spending of money to try and discover something that combines both the new and old with minimal compromise, when such a thing doesn't seem to exist. Take it from someone with experience.

 

I should clarify. I'm not in the market for a new bike at the moment. I was just more curious about what travel bikes everyone on here rode on similar terrain that I ride. But, Herzalot is probably right in the point that even though we're close geographically, riding styles differ quite a bit, so my survey is somewhat flawed from the beginning. Add in the fact that geometry has a lot to do with it as well, makes it even more flawed. So, I'll just do what all statistical surveys end up doing. I will come to my conclusion first, collect all the data, then massage the data to show that the conclusion I came up with first is indeed the result of the statistical analysis. Soooo, the conclusion is that the Trek Fuel, 120mm travel trail bike is the perfect bike for the terrain that I ride since that happens to be the bike I'm riding right now.

 

It's all about how you ride, and how your bike responds. I have different bikes that I ride at different times. For example, if I am going to ride Wood Canyon / Aliso, and I know I'm going to be dropping Rockit and Lynx, I ride a 26" full suspension with a medium frame and 120mm front. If I am going to be climbing to Santiago and descending via Holy Jim, I ride a 29" full suspension with a large frame and 90 mm fork that I can lock out. I won't bottom out my 90mm, but I MIGHT bottom out my 120mm because of where I am riding and what I am doing.

I find that rather than the total travel, it is more important to have your suspension dialed in perfectly. A front fork that is perfectly adjusted to your weight and riding style will behave better than a longer travel fork that isn't fully personalized. My own opinion but I really feel I need to ride a bike for several months - tweaking it constantly - before I get it perfectly adjusted.

 

I love this - Brilliant! (Clapping emoticon)

Oh and if you care - 160mm front, 140mm rear, 66* head angle. 13.3 BB height unsagged. 26" wheels. 29 lbs.

EDIT: Actually, that's not true. I had been running a 160mm fork, but after I bought a 27.5" specific fork, I internally reduced the travel to 150.

 

that is hard to say, depends on they type of riding you do. I personally like 130-150 for the type of riding I do. Right now I have a 140mm travel bike and really happy with it.

 

I dunno....think skill has more to do with it than the amount of travel.

Personally have no issue storming through rough and chunky trails on the HT with 120mm fork.

 

Go big. Go rigid.

 

Few things to consider:

(1) There isn't a suspension created that will absorb all the bumps and impacts of mountain biking.
(2) The more travel, generally the more removed you are from the trail. This can be good AND bad.
(3) There are plenty of times when too much travel is a bad thing. Applying too much front brake, shifting your weight too far forward, digging your front wheel into a barrier instead of over it... a large travel fork will magnify these sins.

 

I seriously regret letting go of the Trek Mamba. Low end hardtail, but with the triple up front and 11-34 in the back, I climbed like a billy goat. The same climbing is, of course, more difficult on the Giant XTC with taller gearing, no matter that it's 6 pounds lighter.

So I need to keep my stable more numerous, not less. I also see a gravel bike in my future.

 

If your MTB quiver is going to consist of a single arrow, I would suggest that you make it an arrow that slays the great majority of the riding you do, and just deal with it's less than perfect traits when ridden in the odd situation that is not in it's wheelhouse. Trying to come up with a bike that is great at everything is an expensive exercise in futility. I think most people like a somewhat even bias for local trails (unless they ride the gnar all the time, or are XC weight weenies). They don't want to sacrifice too much on either end of the spectrum, and are willing to have a bike that does well enough at both climbing and descending.

In full suspension 29ers there is a tipping point that I believe exists at around 120mm travel where the bike becomes more adept at descending than it is at climbing. Right at 120mm, it seems to be pretty much equal, and below 120mm, it's more efficient when climbing than it is proficient at descending. I would add about 10mm to that equation for 26" bikes.

As for putting a longer fork on a bike that was not necessarily designed for it, that can be tricky at best, and a complete disaster at worst. I have had bikes that merely changed a bit toward being more DH capable with a 20mm increase, but only pushed slightly more when cornering, and I have bikes that really sucked after increasing fork travel by 20mm. If you want to go more than 20mm more than the bike was designed for, then I would recommend selling the bike and getting the right tool for the job.

My personal recommendation would be to have the best performing 120mm fork rather than an OK 140mm fork on your particular bike. I have ridden some Fox forks (even with the FIT damper) that were complete piles of fecal matter housed in good looking magnesium and aluminum bits. I have ridden others that have been completely on par with the best RS Pikes I have ridden. Most, I have found to be OK, but nothing . . . . . orgasmic. Yea, a really good fork tuned to perfection can be kinda like that ;~)

 

So for years I've had many different bikes in my quiver; a Ti 29er HT for long non technical rides, a SS HT to make local rides more challenging, a DJ bike for pump tracks and goofing off , a mid-travel trail bike for um.... trail riding and an AM bike for the bigger stuff. It's also nice to have bikes to switch it up and keep the stoke alive.
Now that I got the Tracer 275 I am seriously thinking of selling off half of my fleet. To me, it's that good of a bike. The 27.5" wheels climb and roll just about as good as my HT 29r, at 28lbs it's in the ballpark for a nice trail bike and with 160mm of travel, it's AM capable.

I gotta say, more travel won't do anything for you unless you use it. If you're not bottoming out your suspension now, there is no reason to be looking into more travel.

 

Topic got kind of off-track, but it's an interesting one.

I believe mtn biking is kind of counter-intuitive in the sense that you should be downsizing to entry level style stuff, towards the rigid, heavy, singlespeed extreme, as you get more masterful with your skill. While if you're in the learning phase, you'd want to be upgrading towards the most capable and lightweight dream bike extreme, in order to quicken your pace through the learning phase, especially if you want to hang with experienced riders in group rides without holding them back.

I also believe that to maintain a "single bike quiver", you likely either need to buy a bike so expensive that you can't afford another one, or just shut yourself away from the biking media, such as mags and news/gear review sites, and ride mainly solo, doing the same old stuff, with new stuff only being 1-time deals really, reluctantly doing something that is different than your established style. I personally can't go with a 1 bike quiver, so this is a big IMO.

Back on topic, sort of, I'd much rather ride a Fox Float 34 or Pike set to 120, than a Revelation or Reba set to 140mm. Mainly because their tune matches my riding style better.

 

I really wanted to chime in here, but I have no idea what you just said!

And I love my one-bike quiver. Well, I do have a DH bike, but I don't ride it much. My shuttle buddies all quit DH, I hate the jumps at SS, and I don't get to travel to real bike parks much right now.

My current one-bike quiver isn't very expensive comparatively. I read the MtB media constantly, and I have no idea what the end of your statement means.

I will get a new bike in 2016 (barring any kind of disaster in my life - knock on wood), and I guarantee that new bike won't do everything perfectly! And it won't have carbon rims.

 

I must first start by saying that I have not read each post in this thread, but the ones I have read provide some great insight. i.e. Geometry is super important, how you ride should dictate travel, etc.,

A point that I have not read is that suspension kinematics mean a lot too. I am a DW Link supporter and although I don't need 160mm of travel for all my riding, I don't feel (too)penalized while riding my DW link bike. I have ridden the Counting Coup twice on my 160mm bike and once with my steel hard tail. I rode the hard tail the first year I did the CC and decided that descending Motorway and the Holy Jim's on my 160mm bike was way worth any penalty of power loss. To summarize my stance on the Ibis iteration of DW Link - it uses linkage to provide pedaling platform and the shock for damping. That being said, I believe shock choice is critical to DW Link and likely all suspension designs. My 160mm bike allows me to set the rear shock and pretty much forget about it. No climb switches or propedal levers. And yes, that is a compromise.

The beauty of some of the current "Enduro" offerings is that you can pedal them and they can handle some decent DH level riding.

All this being said, before I buy another "Enduro" bike I will demo some of the new 120-130mm slack trail bikes that have come out as of late. I am seeking a bike that caters towards what I ride most and enjoy most. In the end like all things that use suspension there are compromises. Plush active descending with DH inspired geometry is at the sacrifice of pedaling efficiency and quick nimble slow speed handling. You just have to decide what riding characteristics are most important to you or what weaknesses you are looking for help from your bike. I think that's the longest post I've ever made.

 

Me too.

 

Come to the dark fiber side... you'll love it!

 

May have been your longest post but it was certainly very well said! Kudos!

 

Worth repeating, IMO.

Finding out what kind of riding you like is no easy task. It can take months or years. At some point one probably has to project what he wants to ride more of in the future, and balance that with what he knows well currently. That info, along with demo/rental/borrow sessions on many different bikes, will get a rider pretty far toward a suitable trail tool.

 

I have a 26" Fuel, same amount of travel specifically for a little more travel to handle the occasional chunkier terrain. Sounds like we ride similar types of terrain. I think when you add the fact you have 29" wheels you should be able to handle everything you ride. I went from a 4" bike to the Fuel and it's just what I was hoping for, handles the chunk when needed.

 

This might help

 

Nope. Tried them. Too deflect-y. And did you see that Ibis rim in the Wrightwood thread? There's a reason DHers ride aluminum rims when they can ride anything they want.

 

I missed the thread, did the rim shatter or something?

 

Sheeesh - do I have to find it for you?

Here ya go:

http://www.imtbtrails.com/forum/threads/wrightwood-this-weekend-anyone.3145/page-2#post-28510