Flattening out the Bumpy Bits

Shocks Absorbers... The better they are, the less you have to think about them. So what goes on inside the average MTB shock?

An average MTB shock, yesterday.

Spring & Damper

A basic shock absorber consists of two things, a spring and a damper. The spring is quite simple, a metal coil, or an air spring. The spring supports (or suspends) the weight on the bike (i.e. you). We won't consider springs very much here. Suffice to say that when you compress a spring, it extends again, and can oscillate. Oscillations are baaad, mmkay? A shock that did this would ride terribly. We need a thing to stop the oscillations - the damper. The damper is where the magic happens. Let's look inside...

Manitou Evolver ISX6 Setup

Dark horse?

X Marks the Shock

Fox, Rockshox... I wanted different, I wanted special, I wanted, well, some suspension made by a company who didn't end with "X"... So I bought a Manitou Evolver. It is not a current model (2010) - the 2012 equivalent is  the Swinger Pro DC which adds a lockout, but is (I believe) internally the same shock.

The Evolver is a large volume air shock, with a lot of adjustability: main air spring, rebound damping, separate high + low compression damping, mildly mysterious volume adjust, and the even more mysterious IFP (so mysterious it only has a three letter acronym), are all separately adjustable.

Don't try this at home.

WTF?

Confused by the adjustments? I was. The manual is crap. It doesn't even tell you what the IFP does! And this shock has a lot of adjustments. After some time scouring the net, I found a few things out about the shock, and how to set it up. If you don't own one, sorry  - this post probably won't be that interesting... if you do, read on.