Nailed it.
I think I'm done with Craig for a while...
- Thread starter Electric_City
- Start date
He did 1 other rear shock that's been on 2 of my DH bikes and they're perfect. This one I just never seemed to get what I wanted out of it. I rode it and thought it was "good enough". But now I'm questioning why I have a 6" travel bike and never use more than 4" of it. His response is that you should never use all of your travel. What's it there for?I have an Avy cartridge in both the trailbike and the DH bike, and a tuned SuperDeluxe coil on the trailbike (CCDB coil on the DH, so not much anybody can do)
The trailbike was fine out of the box on both ends, but the DH cartridge was a bit too firm.
I think it was a case of the older I get the faster I was, especially post accidents. He had me tuned as expert, when realistically now I'm weekend warrior speed at best. Retune is good.
Phone experience has been pretty good, bit long winded but no arguing. The re-tune was done by e-mail and was fairly painless, when I was able to convey what I needed changed, and what I liked, took a couple of back and forths but in the end everything was very good.
Maybe because I was "warned" before hand and new kinda what to expect it was not too bad. I knew what I wanted, and we were pretty much on the same page, so he did not have to do any selling.
Keeping fingers crossed further contact goes as wall as it has so far.
Damn, bet I just jinxed myself.
Edit - Wendy has always been a joy to talk to both over the phone or by e-mail.
I really like the past work. But after talking with him and listening to him blame it on everyone else- I just can't justify going back any time soon.
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What part of my post did you not read?
I will when I replace the seals. Or if I find a different shock, then I won't bother.
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You seem frustrated and 'feels good' and 'should get all travel' is what I'm hearing when it comes to your assessment of suspension performance.
What type of riding are you actually doing on this bike? Tires on ground trails primarily or are you replacing 4+ rims a year? How hard do you actually ride it compared to what you asked for it to be tuned for? Are you sending 20-30ft+ jumps on this bike and 15+ foot step downs or is this your daily driver and you run an elliptical front chainring? Does the shock work well otherwise? Heck what are your opinions on 'bottoming out'? Are you of the 'it should happen a few times a ride' type person or 'only on impacts that are so forceful that shoulder dislocations and humerus bone fractures may happen if your hands don't blow off the bar' type?
It's your prerogative if you want to just buy a new shock. It just seems to me that if you had a beer in your fridge and 10 free minutes you could do something that could very easily reduce spring force deep in travel if your air can has some bands up inside it. This costs you all of $0 American pesos and 1 beer's time. No seal kit needed. And you'll probably be much happier with how the shock is working if that's the case.
If the air can is bandless then no harm done. You lost 10 minutes of your time, but still had a beer and probably avoided reading one more of my post.
If you are feeling introspective, I'd say that's a fair question.
Look, I'm not saying you're shock doesn't perform like a turd, but it's pretty hard to judge or help when there isn't any useful variables to consider.
What type of riding are you actually doing on this bike? Tires on ground trails primarily or are you replacing 4+ rims a year? How hard do you actually ride it compared to what you asked for it to be tuned for? Are you sending 20-30ft+ jumps on this bike and 15+ foot step downs or is this your daily driver and you run an elliptical front chainring? Does the shock work well otherwise? Heck what are your opinions on 'bottoming out'? Are you of the 'it should happen a few times a ride' type person or 'only on impacts that are so forceful that shoulder dislocations and humerus bone fractures may happen if your hands don't blow off the bar' type?
It's your prerogative if you want to just buy a new shock. It just seems to me that if you had a beer in your fridge and 10 free minutes you could do something that could very easily reduce spring force deep in travel if your air can has some bands up inside it. This costs you all of $0 American pesos and 1 beer's time. No seal kit needed. And you'll probably be much happier with how the shock is working if that's the case.
If the air can is bandless then no harm done. You lost 10 minutes of your time, but still had a beer and probably avoided reading one more of my post.
According to the sheet 2 neg and 1 positive.
I'm willing to take them out if that's going to resolve everything. But if it just creates another problem like Craig stated, then why waste more of my time and money? I like technical stuff about bikes. But I sent it to him to take care of the stuff that's over my head. That's it. Other times he's fantastic. This time he was not.
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This is the f*cking TRUTH
The fastest dude at your local trail system will most likely finish off the podium at state-wide races. The dudes on the podium at statewide races might not even make qualifying at an EWS. People are ALOT slower and less aggressive than they think they are.
To actually try and help @Electric_City, if you check and you have no bands, have you tried just running a little less psi and slowing the rebound a click? Maybe you lost weight?
You should call him then hit up Dustin at Nemesis Project, he's a good bloke, give him your card details over the phone.
EDIT- I did order an Avy cart in 2010, I was begrudgingly going to order one last year but I rang Craig and I think we both talked me out of it.
This guy popped up on my insta recently, he's local to NYC and has quick turnaround.
www.gearworkmtb.com
Gearwork MTB Suspension
Gearwork is a premium mountain bike suspension service for all Fox and Rockshox Products.
www.gearworkmtb.com
I had a conversation sometime back with him and he seemed fine. Eager to talk about stuff and not hard to get along with.
My avalanche stuff has been some of the best and more reliable I've ridden. The dampers in the DHF were fantastic- the chassis was garbage (and it was a pig). I had a zumbi for a minute and the Woodie on that was one of the best shocks I've ridden- the transition between LSC and HSC was phenomenal. I've been chasing that for a while...I just can't really justify sending a shock off for a tune until it needs a rebuild anyways. Not sure an avy tune is going to take me from "generic trail poseur" to "cat 2 generic trail poseuere"
My avalanche stuff has been some of the best and more reliable I've ridden. The dampers in the DHF were fantastic- the chassis was garbage (and it was a pig). I had a zumbi for a minute and the Woodie on that was one of the best shocks I've ridden- the transition between LSC and HSC was phenomenal. I've been chasing that for a while...I just can't really justify sending a shock off for a tune until it needs a rebuild anyways. Not sure an avy tune is going to take me from "generic trail poseur" to "cat 2 generic trail poseuere"
Word. That's how he was to me in the past and again, he did great work on my stuff in the past. Unfortunately, this is the stuff that turns repeat customers away.
I understand you feel like he ripped you off for $250, nobody likes to get beat. Not trying to be a wiseguy douche but
The $250 is long gone, If you are willing to take the bands out if its going to resolve everything, why don't you take them out and try it? Try making all available adjustments to it before writing it off as someone else's fault. It would take far less time than starting a thread complaining about a guy who isn't here to defend himself?
Who sends a shock out to get tuned without even knowing how many bands/spacers are in it?
Who gets tuned shock back and doesn't use the adjusters/ bands/ psi to try to find the optimal settings? instead goes by the sheet? Why don't you say ignore the sheet and do some investigating? Its the only way you will get anywhere.
You should have started a thread asking people whether or not to throw $250 at a 4 year old low end shock?
You could have saved money and aggravation.
and, admittedly, you know your stuff. I'd argue that most customers would be happy with the same shock and a push sticker attached....
It's obviously a "best guess" too. They plot the bikes LRC and there's some error there, rider weight error, some error with how you describe your riding and how it's interpreted.
Getting into the Monarch+ is not hard and you should be doing that for servicing like lube and cleaning. Switching the bands isn't hard, although there's supposedly warning from RS to not put bands in the negative chamber, like Craig is doing. I put the debonaire can on backwards one time and couldn't figure out why I couldn't pressurize right, but not hard to fix. Running this setup, I prefer the negative bands, but again, there's some level of experimentation with bands and pressure that you still need to do, it's a "best guess" setup and often the stuff Craig recommends is very close...but there's obvious variance where you are going to prefer slightly different values. I've gone in and experimented with the bands after tuning and gone back to what Craig speced, but it's really something you should try to see whether it works better.
I'd probably start with the positive, take a band out of there. If that doesn't do it, take one out of the negative.
Getting into the Monarch+ is not hard and you should be doing that for servicing like lube and cleaning. Switching the bands isn't hard, although there's supposedly warning from RS to not put bands in the negative chamber, like Craig is doing. I put the debonaire can on backwards one time and couldn't figure out why I couldn't pressurize right, but not hard to fix. Running this setup, I prefer the negative bands, but again, there's some level of experimentation with bands and pressure that you still need to do, it's a "best guess" setup and often the stuff Craig recommends is very close...but there's obvious variance where you are going to prefer slightly different values. I've gone in and experimented with the bands after tuning and gone back to what Craig speced, but it's really something you should try to see whether it works better.
I'd probably start with the positive, take a band out of there. If that doesn't do it, take one out of the negative.
i just deal with him thru emails. never had an issue yet. hearing all these stories make me not want to call him since i've never needed to..
LOL, that is exactly the business idea a friend and I had a couple of years ago.
- send a shock to some reputable tuner
- design some fancy "Wonderboinger Suspension" stickers
- sticker on tuned shock
- send shock to Pinkbike for a "review" and tell them that you are in the suspension tuning business
- customers send in their shocks
- do basic service, apply sticker
- if customer indeed knows their shit and complains, offer free retune service (either do it yourself or send to reputable tuner)
- ???
- profit
If you gut the shimz and make it practically undamped prior to applying the sticker so it's "supple off the top", 80% of your customers will call you a suspension god.
Thank you!
I'd wager if you just set most suspension back to the recommended settings and took off the adjusters so people couldn't sabotage themselves, they'd adapt and think you'd done some magic.
That would mean I have to leave Ridemonkey though because of the moar shimz policy here. Not worth it.
When no one sees you remove shimz, are there still moar shimz?That would mean I have to leave Ridemonkey though because of the moar shimz policy here. Not worth it.
Over the past 6 years, on my trailbike, riding on trails, I blew up the stock Fox Float CTD twice. So I got it Pushed, and blew that up. Had it redone, and blew it up again in one ride. Then last year I finally sent it to Avy.
7 weeks later: Craig gets me on the squawkbox and proceeds to go on and on in his Craig sort of way to say the reason I keep blowing shocks is that the linkage design on my bike is among the worst he's ever encountered, and nearly refunded my money until he talked himself into fixing it with a custom tune and larger aircan, while I filled the sparse moments of dead air with pithy comments about my own engineering ignorance that went ignored.
Guess what, sportsfans, it fucking worked. Bike rides like magic now. Which is just as well because I was looking to replace it this year only there are no bikes to buy.
7 weeks later: Craig gets me on the squawkbox and proceeds to go on and on in his Craig sort of way to say the reason I keep blowing shocks is that the linkage design on my bike is among the worst he's ever encountered, and nearly refunded my money until he talked himself into fixing it with a custom tune and larger aircan, while I filled the sparse moments of dead air with pithy comments about my own engineering ignorance that went ignored.
Guess what, sportsfans, it fucking worked. Bike rides like magic now. Which is just as well because I was looking to replace it this year only there are no bikes to buy.
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The Push tune I did on my 2007 Giant worked wonders for my fat ass. Although it could have used a couple moar shimz for rebound, I still have it 2-3 clicks from full closed.
I also like that they send your old shims back, the shim fatigue after a couple years of riding is incredible.
I also like that they send your old shims back, the shim fatigue after a couple years of riding is incredible.
lol shim fatigue, this is ridemonkey
Had one experience with Craig.
Sent my shock in for service. Received a long lecture about screwing in the one adjuster too much, which I admitted was probably the case. Access in the frame was terrible and I couldn't remotely tell where any of the clicks were, so I wasn't surprised. He didn't seem to want to move on from that. Only so many times you can say "Ok, I get it."
After the initial lecture, he started asking me about what category I race, so that he could adjust the tune accordingly. I'm like "I've never raced, I have no idea. I'm relatively slow so I'd be in the beginner or maybe bottom end of sport range". But he continued to press me for like 20 minutes about what race category I fall into. My answer never was what he was looking for, but eventually I managed to get off the phone.
10/10 customer service.
Sent my shock in for service. Received a long lecture about screwing in the one adjuster too much, which I admitted was probably the case. Access in the frame was terrible and I couldn't remotely tell where any of the clicks were, so I wasn't surprised. He didn't seem to want to move on from that. Only so many times you can say "Ok, I get it."
After the initial lecture, he started asking me about what category I race, so that he could adjust the tune accordingly. I'm like "I've never raced, I have no idea. I'm relatively slow so I'd be in the beginner or maybe bottom end of sport range". But he continued to press me for like 20 minutes about what race category I fall into. My answer never was what he was looking for, but eventually I managed to get off the phone.
10/10 customer service.
I've only dealt with Craig via email, on one tune. Tune was good, significant improvement over stock (which was truly horrible), can't complain. Would have liked it better if the shock had separate low/high speed adjusters, but that's not Craig's fault.
However, I've had tunes I didn't get along with and had to send back from other tuners. I'd prefer having the option to select from factory tunes myself (ie L/M/H comp/rebound) from all manufacturers; or even better yet be able to use drop-in compression stacks like Formula uses.
However, I've had tunes I didn't get along with and had to send back from other tuners. I'd prefer having the option to select from factory tunes myself (ie L/M/H comp/rebound) from all manufacturers; or even better yet be able to use drop-in compression stacks like Formula uses.
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This thread makes me think there is a market for selling OEM shocks with stock tunes for really overweight aggressive riders.
If you really want to get him going, tell him you have a proprietary Rock Shox /Specialized rear shock you’d like to have serviced/upgraded. To say he’s not a fan of propriety shocks is an understatement. Rightfully so. He did the work and the shock worked a million times better than the stock set up. In my experience, he’s very long winded, but does great work.
