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[lolachampcar]

I recently had a chance to play with a DS front fork.  I was hopping on it rather energetically a little like a pogo stick.  I could find very little difference going from full soft to full hard on both the bump and rebound settings.  I am used to dampers (not bike forks) that will literally "pack down" when you turn up the rebound and get downright hard with the bump at maximum.  Can someone with bike experience chime in here on just how much adjustment is normal for forks?

[Richard230]

Those rebound and compression damping adjustments on different brands of forks are all over the map.  It just depends upon the manufacturer and what the customer wants.  The really expensive high-end (like Ohlins) forks make a lot of difference with each click. Cheaper forks not so much. But I think the Fast Ace forks are set up for owners who know how to spin dials, but don't know how to properly set up damping.  So they are designed to keep you safe and not let you over-do the damping at either end of the range.  The same goes for the rear shock.  When I had my suspension professionally adjusted (which I recommend) the expert said the forks were OK, but needed more preload, which is the only adjustment not easily accomplished on our forks.

My guess is that the DS forks are designed to provide a soft ride and one that will soak up hard hits and then spring back quickly for the next bump.

This may not help you with your DS forks, but here are the settings that seem to work great on my 2012 "S".  They provide pretty good control and keep the bike stable on the street without being too harsh:

Fork compression:  3 clicks out
Fork rebound:  2 turns out
Preloaded shock spring length:  137 mm
Shock rebound: 1 click out
Shock compression:  4 clicks out

As you can see, the suspension settings are pretty much maxed-out.

[nicktulloh]

Richard,

Where are you measuring the "shock spring length"? Did you measure the sag? The book says about 2 1/2" for my '12 DS and it came from the dealer with 1".

[Richard230]

Richard,

Where are you measuring the "shock spring length"? Did you measure the sag? The book says about 2 1/2" for my '12 DS and it came from the dealer with 1".

Measuring the sag was performed by Catalyst.  I measured the preloaded rear shock spring length between the upper and lower spring retainers.

[nicktulloh]

Do you know what they set the sag at?

[Richard230]

Do you know what they set the sag at?

I didn't bother measuring the sag, as you really need a helper to do that and whatever the sag is seems to work OK.  I just measured the spring preload at 137 mm.  Typically sag should be set at about 25% of the overall travel for street riding, according to what I have read.

[dkw12002]

My rebound was off for me. I run mine one click out. I was getting clunking sounds with almost every bump.

[SK]

I managed to check and set the sag for my 260 lbs human body to Zero's recommended ~2 inches -- on my own for my 2013 Zero S. As you may have read that the rear shock is factory set for a 180 lbs person.  I had to DIY it, so I came up with this method.

Parts required:

1 18 inch expanding curtain rod from Lowes (like 2 dollars)
1 wire twist-tie.
3 inches of velcro strap.>>vlecro'd the top of the curtain rod to the left turn signal, it tops out touching the fender. You could clamp this to the fender as well. Just make sure that it is fully extended after removing your weight when measuring, if it is only velcro'd to the turn signal.
1 clamp. >> clamped the other end of the rod to the underside of the frame on the left side directly beneath the left turn signal. Pad with a cloth so as to not harm the frames finish.
one ink pen.
gloves and spanner wrench.
tape measure.

I used a mallet and a center punch to gently tap loose the locking ring above the rear spring adjuster since my spanner wrench could not quite do it.

See Photo: It is like the curtain rod was designed for this. It really works well. Make your first mark, while lifting up on the back end, with the ink pen at the intersection where the upper rod enters the lower half of the rod.  Place the twist-tie so that it gets moved when the curtain rod collapses under your weight and then stays with the upper rod when it expands again. Where it ends up is your second mark. Measure the difference between the twist tie and the line, adjust the rear spring and then measure again.

This would have worked better for the first mark if I had a stand to put the bike upon. And that is zero's recommendation. So this method is going to be less precise because I did not quite lift it off of the ground. I am sure I got it to as far as it was going  to extend though by lifting the back end up and placing the first mark. That was the hardest part.

I got it set to 2 inches, per the manual, using this method and now I am going to test ride. Will fine tune from there. Cheers.      [I used to watch MacGyver a lot.]

[dkw12002]

I weigh about 140 lbs. and I was getting lots of thunking whenever going over bumps on my 2013 S. I turned the compression rebound screws all the way closed (clockwise) and then backed off one click just so I wouldn't be at an extreme, and now the forks work OK for my size.