START BY READING THE CLICK SUSPENSION POST FIRST
In case you didn’t, I’ll do a very short intro. I found a suspension guy. His name is Mike and he really knows what he’s doing. Me, on the other hand… not so much.
This all started when Mike, my Suspension Guy asked,
“Where are you on your clickers?”
I can ride a bike. Well. What I can’t do is ride a bike, and make a small change to the suspension and then articulate that this change feels better or worse. It’s just not in me. There’s 35 clicks on my forks for compression dampening and 35 for the rebound – 70 clicks in total. Each click makes a very small change in how my forks work. Keyword: Small Change – we’re talking very small little changes. I honestly can’t feel the difference of each click change and I know I’m not alone.
Yet, a good pro racer probably can.
There’s plenty of places that this same thing happens in normal life. I’ll use wine tasting as an example. An expert might put their nose in a glass of wine and pull out a litany of descriptions – citing scents from fruity (berries, citrus), floral (rose, violet), herbal (mint, thyme), oaky (vanilla, toast), and earthy (mushroom, forest floor) notes, plus aging notes like leather or spice, all categorized as primary (grape), secondary (fermentation), or tertiary (aging) aromas that create complexity. I am/was a wine guy. I might get stuff like that and you might get, “yeah, smells like wine“.
Both of us are right.
Or better yet – go get your eyes examined. They’ll do an eye test and if you need corrective lenses they’ll have you look at a chart though a big apparatus and start asking you the simple question of “What’s better – 1 or 2? A or B?” There’s hundreds of clicks on their machine. Thousands of different combinations to choose from.
They are making big changes initially. To you it’s easy to see that #2 is better than #1 so they start moving that direction. Keep in mind, #2 isn’t perfect but it’s better than the other choice. You could literally see that. Starting out with big changes that are easy to identify and working down towards a finer, more perfect setting to get you glasses that work.
This is bracketing in action. We can do a similar version on our forks (and shocks) and yet I’ll bet few of us has ever done it.
HOW TO BRACKET YOUR CLICKERS
STEP 1: Load the bike.
In my case I am building my “BDR Weapon” so that means I need to put on my full riding kit, full luggage, gas, and so on as if I was in the middle of a BDR.
For a MX guy that might mean just putting on your riding gear.
STEP 2: Identify a repeatable location.
For that MX guy it might be as simple as a MX track. For a BDR guy, we never hit the same section twice. Luckily for me, there’s a short section at a local OHV area that is just whoops. I want to be able to really put the suspension to the limit – and in this section there are big enough bumps that I am sure to fully compress the forks on hits.
STEP 3: Back everything off.
My bike has simple clickers. No separate high and low speed stuff. Back off both the Compression Dampening and the Rebound Dampening clickers for both the forks and the shock. This makes the oil passages bigger.
STEP 4: Start with one thing.
We probably have 4 different clickers. Since we’re talking forks right now, let’s start with just the compression clicker of the fork.
STEP 5: Ride the course.
Go out and ride that defined course. That might be a few laps on a mx track. For me it’s going to be my little section of whoops maybe back and forth. We want to do the same speed each time. We want to hit with the same force each and every time. The only thing we want to have a change in is the clicker.
STEP 6: How did that feel?
Go back to the pits and think about how that feels. Write that down in a notebook. That might be something like “Fork Compression: Clicker at 0 – felt too soft”. For me I’m going to create a grid. You’ll see why.
STEP 7: Click a Clicker.
My clickers have 35 or so possible clicks I can adjust. For this exercise we’re going to start out pretty macro. So I am going to take those 35 available clicks and break that into 8 major sections. That means I am going to click one of my clickers 5 clicks.
STEP 8: Ride the course again.
We’ve made one singular change to the bike (clicked a clicker). Now go do the same lap you did in step 5. Come back to the pits and write down how that felt as compared to the last time. Was it it better or was it worse?
STEP 9: Rinse, lather and repeat.
Just like the eye doctor asking you, “Number one or number two?” as he switches back and forth between two different lenses. We’re kind of doing that.
Once we’ve worked through the entire range of the fork compression, we’re going to next do the same with the rebound dampening.
At the end of this exercise you’ll have a really good idea on what works best for you, on your bike, on this particular section. Remember this is all a big compromise. What’s best on one section might not be best in other sections. Your best setting for you might be what works best over a wide range of conditions. Assuming you have 35 clicks and go by bunches of 5, you are going to be able to identify the right setting plus or minus 5. clicks, right?
So now, you can do the same thing all over again but stay within that plus or minus 5 range to narrow down the ideal setting even finer. “Number one or number two?”
MY RESULTS
We had a nearly perfect winter day when we went out to my chosen spot, Carnegie OHV in Tracy. We got all suited up and it was cold so we headed up the hill to warmup both the bike and our bodies. Once I felt warm, we headed back to the truck. I sent Travis off to go ride while I was doing this exercise.
I started with both fork clickers all the way open, easiest, fastest. I started with the Compression side, at 0 clicks, and did a run down the bumps. I found a good speed that set me up to really nail the front end down into the valley of a couple of the bigger ones. I was not looking to do that super cross style of skipping along the tops. I wanted a big hit.
I did that a couple of times to make sure I had a good repeatable thing going. I then clicked up 5 clicks and did it again. What was better? One or Two? I noted that down in my notebook and then clicked another 5. Two or Three?
Rinse, lather, repeat.
Once I was done with the Compression I did the same with the Rebound. I found that was harder to feel, harder to get in my mind. It was easy to feel the compression doing it’s thing. Actually feeling the rebound rebounding took a bunch more thought. Sometimes I would make a run and then do it again and again just to make sure I was certain about what I was feeling.
In the end, here’s my notes. I did a little + to indicate that I thought it could use more. You can see that it wasn’t until 25 clicks out that I even started thinking, “Hey now, we’re getting closer”.
I’m maxed out at 35 clicks on both compression and rebound and I think I could ride it like this. I never got to a point where I thought the previous click was better. I never got to write down a – and that’s a problem.
The problem is that I should be near the mid point of 15 in my clickers. I noted that the bike is riding quite firm and it should, as I have the smallest of oil passages happening right now.
I’ll go back to my suspension guy with these details and I imagine he’ll rework my shim stacks so that the same feeling should be had at mid point in my clicker range. And, because the holes will also be more open then, I should actually regain some of the suppleness I had before. At least that’s what I think.
We’ll find out…
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, had a big cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and is currently building a perfect "BDR Weapon"). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
- HOW TO: Bracket Your Clickers - January 14, 2026
- CLICK Suspension - January 12, 2026
- How to put the Lost Coast BDRx on Your Garmin - December 17, 2025