Please keep me in suspense!

Our shop demo bike is a MY22 Focus Thron2 6.8, it’s a superb eMTB for trail and fast singletrack riding. It’s not light at 28kg but ours is an XL and it has the 750Wh battery for max range. The new Bosch Smart System is more advanced than the old ‘Gen4’ system, with a modular hardware setup for maximum rider customisation and new riding modes from the upgraded Performance CX drive unit.

If you’re a big bloke though, this bike (like many others) will be maxed out in suspension adjustment – if you’re over the 110kg mark then you simply wont be able to get it setup correctly.

The RockShox fork (35 RL Gold) is OK, it’s fine most places but it lacks control in fast descending with lots of high-speed compression. Unfortunately there’s no upgrades to the damper on this model so the only setup chage you can make is airspring pressure and token changes, plus the five clicks of external compression and rebound adjustment.

Swapping out the forks to the Lyrik Ultimate you see here was a no-brainer. They have low and high speed compression adjustment on the top and 20 clicks of rebound adjustment on the bottom. With the Charger 2.1 damper it has a plush action and it’s a much nicer fork to ride. They aren’t perfect though – we bought them during COVID when the only model available was a 51mm offset. This is up from the standard 44mm so the trail is too short and it’s a bit twitchy and doesn’t hold its line very well. Dropping it from 150 travel to 130 has made the problem slightly worse so we’re super keen for the 44mm offset steerer to arrive from backorder to make the front end smooth and controllable like a trail bike should be.

The shock presented a different problem that again necessitated an upgrade. With the original RockShox Deluxe shock, the 325psi max pressure couldnt get us to less than 30% static sag and the bike rides low as a result. With a 2.0 token fitted standard, we could have gone to 2.5 and gone to about 25% sag, but it’s not enough. A soggy rear end is annoying all of the time, so the basic OEM shock has to go.

With a change to Fox for the rear of this bike, we are initially fitting a Float DPS. It’s a better shock with a 350psi max and external adjustment for rebound and compression, and with pressure adjustment we got it to the 25% we’re aiming for. Time now to ride it, and ensure it’s a great demo bike for our customers to try before buying.

We think the long-term plan will be to install a Fox Float X Factory shock with a volume spacer increase. This shock has extra volume and should be plush all the way through the stroke. We’ll have a tuning kit on hand to make more changes if necessary…but I don’t think I’ll be losing 20kg anytime soon!

All these suspension upgrades and mods can be done on your bike. Some you’ll need and some you won’t, we have the tech and experience to do the work that improves your ride. Talk to us and we’ll help you to understand your issues and solve the problem.