Feeling a little under the weather. Yet, I finished torquing all fasteners to spec, and wondering if I'd have the gumption to take it for a short test ride.
Free sag at 33mm. Forks set 18mm up in the clamps (might have to change that now). I'll have to wait until my wife gets home to measure the race sag.
What the hey. Out I rode to my favorite test section of rocks, sand wash, mini whoops and short, rocky hill climbs. Just sitting on the bike I could tell that something was different. The bike didn't seem to sit any higher, but when I climbed aboard, it didn't drop as much as before (no surprise). I putted up and down my street, bouncing on the pegs. I was riding much higher in the stroke, and I detected something many have rumored to be "rebound." This would have to be tested, er, "in the field."
At my favorite training ground, and putting toward my test track to be, I hit a series of bumps and found the suspension to feel "stiff." Sort of. Hmmm. I worked the bike around a series of rocks, whoops, and other obstacles and discovered that while the suspension acted differently, it wasn't necessarily stiffer. I was running over rocks that I was barely feeling.
More importantly, when I went through the rock, my tire seemed better planted than before.
I hit some whoops and noticed that my front end stayed up higher and allowed me to hit the next whoop higher. I must have been blowing through the stroke before. I hit a series of whoops and each time the fork was ready for the next one. There were a few G-outs that had given me problems on earlier rides. I decided to check them out. That was the biggest difference I was able to qualify. No sense of bottoming at all. In fact, no sense of bottoming the entire hour I was out there.
I hit some fast, flowy single track (still with rocks and ruts here and there, with dips in and out of washes). I had meant to see what my rear suspension was doing and after a couple of miles I remembered that I forget to concentrate on it. While I liked me pre-LTR suspension, I was always aware that they were going through their paces. Post-LTR, it looks like I'm kind of forgetting about them.
Rocky, gravely sand wash was okay. There was some twisty (almost, but not quite) sugar sandy sand wash that had me knifing in around some mid-speed turns that I didn't recall happening before. Maybe that's my forks set up too high or maybe I need to click up the compression a bit.
Looks good.
