YZ250x suspension help!

[Luke Hufford]

Hey guys. I recently purchased a 16 yz250x and the first 2 rides i LOVED the suspension. Then the day before a race i reset all my clickers to stock and everything felt like crap. No plushness at all and deflected off everything. I now have a 5.4 shock spring for my 190 pound weight and dialed in sag. Any recommendations on where i should go from here? Right now the fork is 12 out on comp and 15 out on rebound. Shock is 1.75 turns out on hsc, 14 out on lsc, and 18 out on rebound. Any help would be appreciated!

[YAMAHA NICK]

Forks - 8 out on comp.

9 out on rebound

Oil height is stock for now. I’m a mid pack C rider 185# with gear. The front sticks well and tracks good.

 

Shock is stock settings. I have no complaints about it.

 

[Luke Hufford]

40 minutes ago, YAMAHA NICK said:

Forks - 8 out on comp.
9 out on rebound
Oil height is stock for now. I’m 185 with gear. The front sticks well and tracks good.

Shock is stock settings. I have no complaints about it.

I'll give it a try! 

[mlatour]

What are your sag numbers?

Say with too little rear sag combined with 18 out on the shock rebound clicker,

you may be upsetting the chassis and making the forks work harder than necessary.

 

Stock fork springs?

Put a zip tie around a lower tube to measure travel,

determine if it's actually deflecting or, riding too low in the stroke.

Edited September 27, 2018 by mlatour

[Luke Hufford]

3 minutes ago, mlatour said:

What are your sag numbers?

Say with too little rear sag combined with 18 out on the shock rebound clicker,

you may be upsetting the chassis and making the forks work harder than necessary.

 

Stock fork springs?

Put a zip tie around a lower tube to measure travel,

determine if it's actually deflecting or, riding too low in the stroke.

105 and 35. Stock fork springs. The bike only has about 40 hours so its not like the suspension is in dire need for a rebuild. Im not sure why the stock clicker settings felt so bad when everyone raves about the suspension. When i ran the clickers stock i did put a ton of preload on the stock shock spring trying to get more sag

[yo_eddie]

4 hours ago, Luke Hufford said:

105 and 35. Stock fork springs. The bike only has about 40 hours so its not like the suspension is in dire need for a rebuild. Im not sure why the stock clicker settings felt so bad when everyone raves about the suspension. When i ran the clickers stock i did put a ton of preload on the stock shock spring trying to get more sag

Well, after 40hrs the forks will need new bushings, oil and seals for sure. 

[rpt50]

Regarding clickers, here is the procedure my suspension shaman recommends, and I find it works VERY well.

Ideally you need a buddy to help you out (but you can do it yourself, but the procedure won't be "blind").

1. Go to a typical riding area (track or trail) and establish a test loop.

2. Set all clickers to the middle (probably about 12 clicks on J bikes).

3. Ride the loop.

4. Have your buddy change one of the circuits (e.g., fork compression) 10 clicks in one direction, without telling you what he did.

5. Ride loop and just determine if it is "better" or "worse".

6. Go 10 clicks from the middle (20 from where you were) on the same circuit and ride the loop again to determine "better" or "worse"

7. Do this for each of the circuits to establish the direction you want to change the damping, and THEN start with the fine tuning.

Anyway, the point of this, as explained by my shaman, is that the method of making small incremental changes (1 or 2 clicks) is ridiculous, as 99.9% of riders can't tell any difference until it's too late.  They end up making incremental changes in the wrong direction from what they need, and at some point it becomes totally messed up.  By making big initial changes from stock than many riders can actually feel (like 10-12 clicks), you can at least establish the direction you need to go in, and then work from there with smaller changes.

 

[subxero]

What kind of races are you doing?  What is the terrain like and what class and position in that class do you typically fall in?  

 

[LSHD]

My woods settings (sandy woods):

FORKS - 17 compression, 13 rebound (but you may want to go less on rebound)
SHOCK - HS Comp. 2, LS Comp. 14, Rebound 12 out

SAG - Tested 103 - 115. 103 is best for me so far. Possibly could go even lower. Plants the front end but doesn't feel heavy and steers great. Running M59 front, which made a huge improvement on front end traction and tracking.

PSI = 11 front, 9 rear, again in our sandy soil.

[subxero]

2 hours ago, rpt50 said:

Regarding clickers, here is the procedure my suspension shaman recommends, and I find it works VERY well.

Ideally you need a buddy to help you out (but you can do it yourself, but the procedure won't be "blind").

1. Go to a typical riding area (track or trail) and establish a test loop.

2. Set all clickers to the middle (probably about 12 clicks on J bikes).

3. Ride the loop.

4. Have your buddy change one of the circuits (e.g., fork compression) 10 clicks in one direction, without telling you what he did.

5. Ride loop and just determine if it is "better" or "worse".

6. Go 10 clicks from the middle (20 from where you were) on the same circuit and ride the loop again to determine "better" or "worse"

7. Do this for each of the circuits to establish the direction you want to change the damping, and THEN start with the fine tuning.

Anyway, the point of this, as explained by my shaman, is that the method of making small incremental changes (1 or 2 clicks) is ridiculous, as 99.9% of riders can't tell any difference until it's too late.  They end up making incremental changes in the wrong direction from what they need, and at some point it becomes totally messed up.  By making big initial changes from stock than many riders can actually feel (like 10-12 clicks), you can at least establish the direction you need to go in, and then work from there with smaller changes.

 

This is about how i think about it, at least until you better understand what exactly changes when you turn the clickers and more importantly what it feels like.  So make some big changes and take lots of mental notes, even written notes after 2 laps or so, once you get a feel for it and what you like try some small changes and see if you can feel the difference.

Doesn't hurt to get a better understanding of what is physically happening with the suspension behavior when making changes.  What does compression damping mean? what does increase vs decreasing it actually do/mean, high vs low? same for rebound damping.  And then how does that translate to what you feel in different riding situations. 

I also recommend doing testing on an unfamiliar loop so there is no bias in your interpretation of how the suspension feels.  What i mean by this is don't test at your home/local track/loop that you ride all the time that you know every nuance, pebble of.  If you tune your suspension on a place like this you are most likely not getting a good base setting for races, especially hare scrambles.  You can probably ride the balls off of your personal track/loop and you will tune towards the stiffer side of things, then when you get to a race on unfamiliar terrain it will feel like garbage. 

Hare scrambles you typically can't practice/test ride so unless you are pulling over during the race to make adjustments you are stuck with what you got.  In MX you can tweak things a bit here and there before the race so it is not as bad

 

One last thing,  obviously don't forget to bleed the air on the forks and make sure you know the proper procedure for putting the front wheel on to make sure the forks stay perfectly aligned.  

Edited September 27, 2018 by subxero

[Luke Hufford]

3 hours ago, rpt50 said:

Regarding clickers, here is the procedure my suspension shaman recommends, and I find it works VERY well.

Ideally you need a buddy to help you out (but you can do it yourself, but the procedure won't be "blind").

1. Go to a typical riding area (track or trail) and establish a test loop.

2. Set all clickers to the middle (probably about 12 clicks on J bikes).

3. Ride the loop.

4. Have your buddy change one of the circuits (e.g., fork compression) 10 clicks in one direction, without telling you what he did.

5. Ride loop and just determine if it is "better" or "worse".

6. Go 10 clicks from the middle (20 from where you were) on the same circuit and ride the loop again to determine "better" or "worse"

7. Do this for each of the circuits to establish the direction you want to change the damping, and THEN start with the fine tuning.

Anyway, the point of this, as explained by my shaman, is that the method of making small incremental changes (1 or 2 clicks) is ridiculous, as 99.9% of riders can't tell any difference until it's too late.  They end up making incremental changes in the wrong direction from what they need, and at some point it becomes totally messed up.  By making big initial changes from stock than many riders can actually feel (like 10-12 clicks), you can at least establish the direction you need to go in, and then work from there with smaller changes.

 

Interesting method! Im not sensitive enough to suspension settings to feel minute changes. Problem is i have a race coming up on sunday and no time to test it out before. Just have to suck it up and try to not jar my fillings out 

[Luke Hufford]

1 hour ago, subxero said:

What kind of races are you doing?  What is the terrain like and what class and position in that class do you typically fall in?  

 

Northern CA hare scrambles. Not a ton of roots like the east coast but a fair amount of rocks, square edge bumps, and whooped out trails. Mid pack C racer. No MX except for the races that may put in a little track section

[IronUA]

I have a 18 X, I lowered the oil level to 320cc might even try 300cc.

Front Comp-11-12 rebound 11-12 , fork height 14mm i believe front top clamp to the top of the cap 

rear HS-2.0, Comp 11-12 , Rebound 11-12   rear sag 102mm 34mm free sag

I do east coast hare scrambles Vet B usually place 4th through 2nd, keep crashing or little mistakes keeps me from first haha.. I weight 170 plus gear, I recently changed my stock rear spring to a 5.3 and much stiffer but rides very good i feel like i can just blast stuff and not worry. I had the suspension revalve but honestly i wish i just tried lowering the oil level first. Had it done 30 hours ago i think he changed the small spring in the front forks to a little lighter rate not sure what, he does good work bike feels awesome.

Tires i tried a lot i think i finally found what im just going to stick with michelin starcross 5 Mediums, Past 10 hours i installed a front nitro moouse and rear i have tubliss run anywhere front 7-12psi depending the track

Edited September 27, 2018 by IronUA

[Luke Hufford]

45 minutes ago, IronUA said:

I have a 18 X, I lowered the oil level to 320cc might even try 300cc.

Front Comp-11-12 rebound 11-12 , fork height 14mm i believe front top clamp to the top of the cap 

rear HS-2.0, Comp 11-12 , Rebound 11-12   rear sag 102mm 34mm free sag

I do east coast hare scrambles Vet B usually place 4th through 2nd, keep crashing or little mistakes keeps me from first haha.. I weight 170 plus gear, I recently changed my stock rear spring to a 5.3 and much stiffer but rides very good i feel like i can just blast stuff and not worry. I had the suspension revalve but honestly i wish i just tried lowering the oil level first. Had it done 30 hours ago i think he changed the small spring in the front forks to a little lighter rate not sure what, he does good work bike feels awesome.

Tires i tried a lot i think i finally found what im just going to stick with michelin starcross 5 Mediums, Past 10 hours i installed a front nitro moouse and rear i have tubliss run anywhere front 7-12psi depending the track

Damn i need to get mine that dialed! The bike is still pretty new to me so i need more seat time and tuning to get it where im happy with it

[EmpireofDerp]

I saw one guy mention it but are you bleeding the air off your forks before every ride? Huge

[hallsy]

On 9/26/2018 at 7:42 PM, Luke Hufford said:

105 and 35. Stock fork springs. The bike only has about 40 hours so its not like the suspension is in dire need for a rebuild. Im not sure why the stock clicker settings felt so bad when everyone raves about the suspension. When i ran the clickers stock i did put a ton of preload on the stock shock spring trying to get more sag

Wouldn't increasing the pre-load reduce (less) sag?

[blk00ss]

I'm not going to be much help here. But I am curious to hear how you like your 250X. I've only ever owned motocross bikes (RM, KX, CR etc). As I've gotten older I find my preference is trails, creek crossings, log jumping etc. I really really want a 250x, but would love to hear some real rider input. It seems a lot of people love it, but complain about 1st gear being to tall which is fixable, but do you find that statement to be true? Does it run like a standard YZ250?

[LSHD]

On 9/26/2018 at 7:34 PM, Luke Hufford said:

Hey guys. I recently purchased a 16 yz250x and the first 2 rides i LOVED the suspension. Then the day before a race i reset all my clickers to stock and everything felt like crap. No plushness at all and deflected off everything. I now have a 5.4 shock spring for my 190 pound weight and dialed in sag. Any recommendations on where i should go from here? Right now the fork is 12 out on comp and 15 out on rebound. Shock is 1.75 turns out on hsc, 14 out on lsc, and 18 out on rebound. Any help would be appreciated!

Set it back to what it was when you LOVED it?

[YAMAHA NICK]

I'm not going to be much help here. But I am curious to hear how you like your 250X. I've only ever owned motocross bikes (RM, KX, CR etc). As I've gotten older I find my preference is trails, creek crossings, log jumping etc. I really really want a 250x, but would love to hear some real rider input. It seems a lot of people love it, but complain about 1st gear being to tall which is fixable, but do you find that statement to be true? Does it run like a standard YZ250?

It does not run out like a mx version. It’s actually very linear but it does go. It has no problem lifting the front wheel in any gear at pretty much anytime. Today was the first day where I was irritated about it not being low enough when I crashed on a super steep hill and really needed it lower to get going again. Other than that little thing... it’s a great do anything bike. The suspension is really good although it’s getting sent off for a revalve. It feels as light as my 125. I may put a fly wheel weight on it but I’m not sure. A rekluse would be nice but I’d rather spend the $600 on something else. I’ve got 15 hours on mine. Once I got the jetting figured out I’ve been very happy with it.

[EmpireofDerp]

I'm not going to be much help here. But I am curious to hear how you like your 250X. I've only ever owned motocross bikes (RM, KX, CR etc). As I've gotten older I find my preference is trails, creek crossings, log jumping etc. I really really want a 250x, but would love to hear some real rider input. It seems a lot of people love it, but complain about 1st gear being to tall which is fixable, but do you find that statement to be true? Does it run like a standard YZ250?

I run gnarly shit on stock yz gearing with a 13oz fww and 2 degree timing retard, zero issues. The X should be even better.