RUST magazine: RUST#37

technical
w
ALAN ANSWERS
YOUR QUESTIONS:
How to tune with older tires
You guys asked a question, if you
can’t swap tires at the first sign
of wear, how will them wearing
down change my suspension?
Like most guys, I run my tires
until the knobs are quite worn
down. Just be aware that, as
the sidewall breaks down that
component of your suspension
damping will feel a bit more
mushy. You can try adding a
couple psi to the tire, or adjust
compression a bit stiffer. Also,
note that as the tire sidewall
wears it will create a bit more of
a dead feeling, so try to speed
up rebound a bit to compensate.
It’s helpful to keep a log of these
adjustments so you can better
predict the next time when to
start tweaking!
Thanks for reading, and Keep It
Pinned!
Alan
ASK ALAN
If you have any comments or
questions for Alan, or would like
him to address any specific
topics, please drop him an email
at SP@rustsports.com He’ll
endeavour to address these in
his ongoing series on suspension.
moving the forks back, or closer to the
steering head. This creates a shorter
wheelbase, and makes the bike carve
turns tighter. It will make your bike feel
shorter front to back and increase the
ability to flick the bike side to side in
tight woods, for example. The flipside
to this is that you might pick up more
headshake at high speeds (which the
damper above would help with). Your
forks will also tend to dive more in
corners and under braking as more
weight can be transferred directly on to
them. Keep this in mind if you go this
route, a bit more spring preload and/
or compression clicks would be the
answer here.
Like with all additions: test test test!
When we ran KTMs in EnduroCross,
we would typically go from a 22mm
offset to 20 to get that super sharp
tight turning. Since EX does not have
super high speeds there really was no
downside. I really do not recommend
increasing the clamp offset from stock,
the chassis geometry will become too
far off and the bike will not want to
turn well at all. Usually the triple clamp
changes above are done to either
correct a production problem or set the
bike up for a specific terrain/track type.
SKID PLATES
Skid Plates? WTF? Yes, you would be
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