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| *Vultures Knob>>>Cycling |
What is a preload on a bike's suspension? |
What is a preload on a bike's suspension? Pre-load means to put an inital load on your suspension. That is, to put some pressure on your springs before you even get on the bike. This is done because without some load your suspension would be too soft or mushy with a light load and could be noisy and damaging with the spring completely unloaded then loaded etc. Think about a car. The springs on a car are preloaded. The heavy weight of the car itself is the load. A 4000 lb car would apply a 1000 lb preload to each of the 4 springs at each wheel. A bike fork doesn't have enough weight itseft to do this. Make sense? Preload is usually a term applied to coil spring suspension....and is just what was said above. With air suspension, it's called compression.....same thing, though. With coils, a screw cap is turned in to compress the spring a little and effectively (or not) stiffen it up.....this is a fine tuning adjustment on coils and not a replacement for having the correct spring for your weight and/or riding style. With air, you pump up the chamber for the same reasons....the preloaded air pressure sets the fork for how much sag and compliance you're looking for. Sorta. If you're talking about jumps, then preload refers to crouching and pressing your hands and feet down to briefly compress the tires and fork so that you can spring back up at the right moment and put more energy into jumping. Useful for curbs and bunnyhopping, but not needed for well-constructed jumps with speed. How's all that for a dictionary anwser? ;) |
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