Followed Karl’s thread it seemed clear that my car had left the factory with road-orientated settings (indeed Steve told me this when I picked it up), I was as reported above, pretty happy – it seemed a massive improvement on the un-adjustable Bilsteins.
So I finally put aside some time to try to get them the way I wanted off-road. Our half-mile long dirt drive was pretty handy. It’s fast and loose at one end and muddy and pot-holey at the other. There’s also no speed limit
Firstly then the lockrings. These were very easy to unlock and move up the shocks as Karl reported. No jacking of car required. With what looked like an inch or so of extra travel un-locked we did a reference run with my son as spotter. He reported that the previously locked-out top shorter spring was no indeed moving. We both reckoned that this spring is actually stiffer than the lower longer one and seems to work as a sort of sprung bump-stop which would make sense.
The car already felt more able to absorb the bigger bumps so happier straight away.
So then we set about the damping. I didn’t have all day so evaded best practice of making only single gradual changes. Previous experience suggested the following plan to me: Use some sort of logic to plan a combination of changes – and make them large enough to notice. Test drive and dial out anything you don’t like.
Fox use a slightly bizarre sort of reverse calibration where the highest number is the least damping and the lowest number the most. Yup, odd. The number of clicks available is as below:
High speed compression: 22
Low speed compression: 24
Rebound: 22
You can see form my garage wallchart what the factory road settings were. So about one third from stiffest – which makes sense for the road.
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So I dialled the damping down by a few clicks. Next run felt better still with the shocks more free to respond to bumps. Doing a series of runs meant some fine tuning then. The key thing we dialled in that we then had to dial out was a sort of flutter or oscillation from the rear at low speeds. So this was the only setting that actually went back to the original: Rear LSC stayed at 8 clicks.
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Have to say was ecstatic with the outcome. The Nomad in the rough like I always thought is should.
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However, what about the road? My expectation was to have to return it to the road settings. So before I did I thought ‘let’s give it a try.’ I have to say I was fully expecting a wallowy ride with way too much body roll.
However, to my amazement, it felt as much improved on the road as off. I am sure it wouldn’t have felt right on track. But given the generally appalling state of our B and back-roads (where the Nomad is the most fun on-road anyway) it felt absolutely ideal. The car squats a bit more under hard acceleration, but actually seems less prone to hooligan style oversteer in exiting roundabouts (maybe a negative?!).
Anyway, it staying as it is now. Moving to Fox suspension made the car hugely more enjoyable, and liberating the shocks with more travel and generally reduced damping has taken enjoyment of the car another step on.
Roll on! Yeeha!
