Video: Mountain Bike Front Suspension Systems

Learn tips on mountain bike front suspension systems in this free online bicycle parts and maintenance video.

Video Transcript

So the big reason I can see choosing coil springs over air spring these days is reliability. Reliability isn't even that big of an issue. The other things are the initial small bump compliance. Because an air spring has a seal in it, there is what is called static friction or stiction, that keeps the piston from moving initially. So this right here, is an air spring assembly for a air sprung fork like this one. So this is inside your stanchion, like that, just imagine that. There's an air valve here that pushes against there so that's your spring force and you also have an air valve on the bottom here that creates another spring force against there. So these two springs move against each other. And by adjusting your negative spring that changes how simply your, how efficiently, how quickly your fork breaks away. On a coil sprung fork, what you'd have, is you'd have a negative spring like this, which is like the air negative spring except its an actual spring and then that would be pushing against a coil spring. So this would be for a very long travel application. This actually isn't from a coil fork, this is from a different type of air fork, but it gives you an idea of what is going on. So there are various lengths of and weights of negative springs, such as this, available, which allow someone who is knowledgeable about tuning to both lower a fork if I put a longer negative spring that would shorten the travel of the fork, because it would move everything up, so I'd need to use a shorter spring to compensate for that. So if I could cut this spring down by the same amount, by about two inches, I'd shorten the travel of the fork by about two inches. That's going to give you a rough idea of air springs versus coil springs for forks.

Mountain Bike Front Suspension Systems

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