Most of us don’t understand how important valving is to ensure a comfortably smooth ride. If we were to keep this in simple terms, valving your shims is about getting the right compression to rebound ratio without messing up the damping characteristic.
Now, this is no rocket science stuff, as basic tuning is what every off-road ride can do it the right way. Essentially, there are two types of shock valving: the basic and the advance one. This blog will help every possible rider out there to know more about how the valving process works.
Motocross Suspension tuning: Shock Valving
Most of you know that Shock absorbers help finesse handling performance by dampening movements that would otherwise bounce the rider. High performance motocross shocks consist of a piston attached to a shaft moving vertically inside the shock cylinder. The shims is what help maintain the oil flow that effortlessly moves the piston.
Once the shaft starts moving, the oil is pushed against the shim stack. The force by which the oil pumps against the shims determines the shock movement. Knowing this oil pumping force is how we can determine shock valving.
Basics of Shock Shim Stack
Most of the Atv Shock shims tuning involves dealing with two shim stacks: one that is used for compression and the second one for rebound. The commonest configuration for motocross suspension tuning is using the progressive shim stack having 5 to 10 shims. The thickness of the shims plays an important role. The thicker your shim is, the stiffer your shock becomes.
Therefore, the valving shock specification must have 0.15 compression shims and 0.12 rebound shims making the ration 15:12.
Going Advance with shim stacks
Talking about advance tuning, here is when flutter shim stacks weigh in. Standard flutter stack configuration has a much smaller shim diameter situated between two larger diameter shims with emphasis on the compression side.
The flutter stack inside the shock, maintains a distance before the stiffer shim could get in touch with the larger one. Having a second bypass shock could allow more movement, damping substantial hits to the bike.
The thinner and more your shims are, the damping becomes much smoother.
If you increase the pressure in the reservoir, your compression will increase automatically.
Do not change the rebound damping if your spring rate is already changed.
To revamp your rebound rate, you can make holes in the shocks bypassing the shims.
If by chance your shocks become soft and heat up quite often, then you need to have a secondary shock.
The next time you take your bike on an off-road venture, this information is gonna help you prepare your bike’s damping for every rough bump on the road. This information has been jotted down from the feedback of the professional riders. Now, its up to you to make use of this and do your Motocross Suspension Tuning all by yourself.
