After my first real weekend riding the new Glory at Northstar, I obviously had some tuning to do.
The 2013 Boxxer Team/R2C2 fork was the main focus. I was only getting about 165mm of 200mm of travel out of it and only sagging the fork about 25%. Rockshox does provide a tuning guide and a service manual, but I’m going further than that. The stock medium (red) springs were in the fork and both high and low speed compression as well as the bottoming adjustment were as loose as externally possible. I am riding back on my bike as my wrist injury is still my #1 issue when riding. This puts less of a load on the fork so my tuning may be far different than most would need and may change as my wrist starts working better. I know I’m not riding my bike correctly right now but I assure you that I’m riding well enough to play the game with the fast folks.
Taking the fork’s spring side out, I made the following observations:
* medium (red) spring installed
* Bottoming bumper effective 45mm from bottom
* Bottoming adjustment from 45 to 75mm. (wtf?)
* Bumper size – 18mm x 151mm bumper (11.4015.379.000 – Drop-Stop Bumper, Qty 1 – 2010-2012 Boxxer Team/R2C2)
* 3x 2.5mm preload shims (7.5mm)
I replaced the medium spring with a soft (yellow) spring to get about 30% of sag from the fork. It turned out that there was some variance in the springs and the system so I had to add an additional 7mm of ‘preload’ spacer just to take up the slop. I cut the bottoming bumper down 31mm to 120mm. This would allow bottoming adjustment in the last 15-45mm of travel.
After testing on my second weekend with these changes, I was able to bottom the fork properly but still with compression all the way out. I’m going to pull the fork apart to lube the seals and change to slipperier lighter fluids to try to gain some adjustment range. Hopefully that will dial the fork in for a while.
I had bent my hanger and derailleur on my first outing so I replaced the hanger with a NSB DH0080. The original is in the spares bag. You must have a spare in hand when doing any serious riding.
I had tried running the wider range 12-30 cassette on the bike for more outback fun but changed to an 11-25 cassette for a faster 11t cog and a tighter range for better overall chain tension. The smaller steps between gears is really nice too. I’m feeling strong so the 25t cog isn’t that bad for now and for Northstar.
A also fixed the hose ends at the master cylinder to proper BH-90 fittings. The new style is BH-90 not BH-63. It makes a difference and worth noting. I only had BH-63 when I put the bike together. Now it’s right.
I did a little more adjustment to the front end as well. I moved the crown as low into the fork as possible (200mm). The bike rode fine on even the most gnarly trails but this lowered the bb a bit more to the ground. This was fine as my old M6 was crazy low. The change did move the relationship of my cranks and handlebars and I’ll be swapping out the 30mm rise Truvativ BooBar to a 20mm rise BooBar. I’ll also be cutting them down from 780mm to 760mm as it gets a bit nutty in close quarters with the crazy wide stuff.
The 2012 Rockshox Vivid R2C shock that came with the bike has an odd clunk it’s producing. I believe it’s an effect of an internal negative spring. I’m thinking of taking it apart or swapping it out. Very un-inspiring. I love my CCDBs. They’ve always worked super for me.
One very odd thing that is occurring is the limit screws on my Shimano Zee short cage derailure are loosening up on my when riding the bike. I’ve had to adjust the derailure several times a day. Very odd. I’ve never seen this happen before. I’m going to find a way to apply some threadlocker to them. Hopefully that will make the difference.
