Before Buying A Bike (Vol.2 …suspension)
Last week I mentioned how the cycling industry capitalizes on unproven theories and fads. We focused on tires and the fruitless return to 1950’s balloon tires. This week we’ll focus on suspensions and how they react with wider tires.
First and foremost, suspensions are for off road control, not comfort. As soon as mtb’s became popular and suspensions became necessary to maintain downhill control at high speeds, the industry started adding them to just about everything.
I realize there are a very few, very different, comfort suspension systems. These have extremely limited travel and absorb vibrations as well as pavement irregularities, not roots and rocks. They are quite lightweight. Some of these are seat springs, elastomer stems and suspension seat posts. Still, even these require energy to compress with every pedal stroke.
More common suspensions are heavy. The cheaper the suspension, the heavier. If your suspension has no preload and lockout adjustment, it is very heavy and also is not likely to hold up well. Eventually, it will dive when you try to stop, greatly extending stopping distance. To say it is dangerous might be an exaggeration, but it is not ideal.
All suspensions, unless they are locked out and useless, absorb at least some of your pedaling energy (range on an e-bike). So, if you ride on the street, or hard pack trails, suspensions rob energy, are heavy and as you will learn, can even make your bike less stable.
When you add a suspension to a bike with wider, taller sidewall tires, you magnify the problem with dive and squirm. A soft, high volume tire compresses or squirms at the same time as your suspension. This is expected on rough, off road trails (we’re talking roots, big rocks and washouts, not chuck holes). On the street, or on hard pack trails, that rubber grabs and can even send you head over handlebars. The wider and softer your tires, the more likely this will be a problem.
So, if you do not intend to ride hard, off road, you should stay away from bikes with suspensions. Get a bike that is properly fitted to you, with proper geometry or frame material to make you more comfortable. It will work better, last longer and in the case of an e-bike, give you more range. We’ll cover those issues next week in vol 3.