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Can someone decipher this for me?

ChrisRobin

Turbo Monkey
Jan 30, 2002
3,346
190
Vancouver
Just looking to confirm what I think I see here with regards to the Intense Carbine 29 and its leverage ratio:
http://linkagedesign.blogspot.ca/2013/08/intense-carbine-29-2014.html

Suspension starts out a little stiff (I'm thinking for pedaling), flattens out a bit and then becomes regressive to help with getting full travel. So the frame is best used with an air shock as a coil is too linear vs the progressiveness of an air spring?

 

kidwoo

Artisanal Tweet Curator
The low leverage RATIO at the beginning is going to make it hang up with an air shock. Big negative chamber air shocks are much much better at alleviating this but it's still there. A coil would be better in that respect.

I have no freaking clue why people design bikes like that. I think they see an increasing leverage rate as a way to deal with the breakaway forces of an air shock but that's only at the very very top of the stroke. You don't need to go 1/3 of the way into the travel to achieve that. It's better to just start high.

The deep travel part of that curve is pretty progressive. Linear but still progressive as in the leverage of the bike over the shock is still increasing. This will be exaggerated a little by an air shock which like you say ramps up harder at the very end of the travel. But most air shocks have a soft, or loose midstroke. That bike will make it even moreso.

That bit at the beginning is happening above sag. So when you're maching along and your rear wheel is extending past sag to drop into holes etc, the bike is making it harder for the shock to compress.....so again more of a wheel hang up. It's kind of just shit all around IMO. But a coil will make it better. Especially one with some good compression damping circuits.
 

ChrisRobin

Turbo Monkey
Jan 30, 2002
3,346
190
Vancouver
Interesting... thanks for answering that. I was thinking of going to a custom tuned coil shock but was told because a coil is linear, I'd end up blowing through the travel at the end. I know the compression can be tuned to offset this to a certain point but was encouraged to stick with my Float X2. While the Float X2 is 'good', I definitely notice the bit of wheel hang while pedaling on flat terrain over rocks and roots, as well as the lousy mid stroke.
 

kidwoo

Artisanal Tweet Curator
It's mildly progressive towards the second half of the travel so it's no orange bike or anything. You can still get a bunch of ramp up from volume reducers and yes, HS comp damping on the x2. So no, I'd disagree that you 'need' a coil for that part. Where a coil is going to be most beneficial is around topout. That and the fucked up mistroke of that vpp curve are exacerbated by an air spring for sure.
 

ChrisRobin

Turbo Monkey
Jan 30, 2002
3,346
190
Vancouver
Ok thanks for the info. That clears things up. I was wondering all of this because a suspension tuner I've used multiple times before said he couldn't make a coil shock work at all for this. He said it looked like the frame was built around an air shock to use the progressiveness of the air spring; a coil shock would bottom out way too quickly. I wonder if he was looking at the wrong graph or had the wrong info. Two other tuners told me a tuned coil shock would work well.