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Seeking 2018 Pivot Mach 429 Trail Rear Suspension Setup Help

4K views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  Stahr_Nut 
#1 ·
Crowd sourcing for rear suspension setting suggestions for my 2018 Pivot Mach 429 Trail that I recently picked on clearance from Competitive Cyclist.

Our trails here in Michigan are quite flat and pedally with a lot of “chatter bump” type stretches of roots, rocks and braking bumps. So both low speed compression for pedaling efficiency and high speed compression for small bump sensitivity are very critical to good suspension performance. We don’t have the big hits and drops or extended climbs and descents like other parts of the country have.

The bike has a Fox Float Factory DPS Evol rear shock. I have played around with sag and settings on the shock quite a bit so far and I’ve been able to a find a combo of settings such that the low speed compression is okay but I can’t seem to get the high speed compression dialed in. When I set it up such that the small bump compliance is close to where I want it the rear end feels way to sloppy while pedaling and in g-out situations and when I set it up such that the rear end provides adequate support for pedaling and g-outs it comes at a significant cost to small bump compliance.

The best combo I’ve found so far is to set sag such that the O-ring indicator is at the blue “trail” line (30%) on the sag gage and run the shock in the “medium” position. These settings seem provide an adequate pedaling platform but as I mentioned above cause the small bump compliance to fall well short of my expectations.

Do you have any suggestions that may help me out?
 
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#2 ·
Have you experimented with air volume spacers before? It's the least expensive option for custom tuning, and super simple to do at home. Not sure if you're going to get the setup you're aiming for but it should give you some more room on either end (add a larger spacer for a more progressive spring curve to compensate for G-outs while keeping the low speed settings you like).
 
#3 ·
I have the same bike---my take is the bike tends to XC and is on the stiff end ---the dw/shock are designed this way---remember you have relatively little rear travel to start with--play around but my take is you cannot get small bump where you want it w/o messing up the pedal performance
 
#4 ·
Thanks for the replies.

I have three riding buddies who ride Mach 429SL's. They all can't say enough about how great the small bump compliance of the 429SL is. Out of curiosity I'm hoping to temporarily swap shocks with one of them to see what, if any, different the factory tune makes. If nothing else it should make for an interesting experiment.
 
#5 ·
I'd say you're setting it up wrong.
Go for XC sag (~20ish %), full open and have Fox install light compression assembly. Then put few volume reducers if necessary.

Pedal mode on every shock is terrible especially on a bike with decent kinematics. Go for light hsc stack with quick rebound and medium lsc. That way shock is going to react quickly and be active on small bumps while still providing good support and pedal platform. You can achieve this good platform with higher pressure as it will ride higher and give other benefit such as steeper seat angle and better sensitivity, you also won't have to run a lot of volume reducers and LSC since more pressure is going to keep if from diving too deep when not needed.
 
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