Types of Mountain Bike Dampers

Video Transcript

"There are three types of widely used and well-respected damping mechanisms on bicycle suspension units. A shimmed damper, a mixed damper, and a ported pumping rod damper. I'm going to talk about the shim damper first because it's sort of the standard in other motorized sports, and one of the most common in and sought after type of damping for mountain bike use. So what we have, is we have this shaft. There's a knob here that makes changes in the size of that orifice--I think you can see how there's a little hole there and right there. And as I change the knob setting, it changes how much of that orifice is exposed. So that's what's called free bleed. What does the majority of the damping is a piston, which is this main piece of metal here that has this little gray thing--that's a glide ring, which is basically a bearing that allows the piston to seal well with this damper rod, and also slide smoothly. So, I've got that. And then on either side of this piston, the piston has holes in it that allow oil to flow through, and there's little flexible metal shims."