2020 Norco Optic C1

komdotkom

Likes Bikes and Dirt
I managed to get out for a ride by myself at Hawkes Bay and spent more time fucking about with sag and tyre pressure.
The trails there are through a pine plantation and are alleged to be built by the guy who did Redwoods at Rotorua. They are pretty flowy but with plenty of doubles and drops, plus a couple of pretty decent climbs.
I reckon half my problem is that I've been riding VPP bikes for a long time and I'm really used to the anti squat built into that design, so pedalling hard out of the seat results in no traction so I'm very used to spinning hard hunched down over the bars.
On the Optic the traction out of the saddle is great so you can really charge up steep climbs, but seated you need to make sure that you keep your pedal strokes smooth or its bob town.
Some fork and shock twiddling resulted in some amazing traction down hill and the bike was is now more lively with a bit less pressure in the rear and I had a big smile on my face at the end of the black runs.
It's still heavy and carbon wheels have been ordered, but I'm starting to come around to this thing.
In other news I broke another Speciaized carbon seat, they just aren't that durable. And the back wheel needs some serious attention, I cased a double on the way back to the car and now it's not happy at all. Nothing structural but it's fucking noisy.
Back in Australia tomorrow and will head out to Smiths later in the week when I've got the wheel sorted.
 

Daniel Hale

She fid, he fid, I fidn't
In other news I broke another Speciaized carbon seat, they just aren't that durable.
pls no , moorey will start banging on carbon has no place on seats, cranks, droppers etc etc

heading out to smiths gully? how are trails there at present?
 

Irck

Likes Bikes
@komdotkom How many clicks of rebound does your Super Deluxe have? Mine only has 9 clicks.

Seemed a little low after coming off the 20 that my old Monarch Plus had so I emailed Norco and apparently the shock is supposed to have 20.
 

Irck

Likes Bikes
@komdotkom How many clicks of rebound does your Super Deluxe have? Mine only has 9 clicks.

Seemed a little low after coming off the 20 that my old Monarch Plus had so I emailed Norco and apparently the shock is supposed to have 20.
Sorry, I must have written that in a rush. Norco originally said the shock was supposed to have 10, NOT 20 clicks. However, I got another response from their tech customer service that confirmed that the shock does actually only have 9 clicks.
 

creaky

XMAS Plumper
Yes, dismiss the obvious.

Why are you asking about this? Are you finding that you aren’t able to get the shock performing well (e.g. you are outside of the ‘design’ pressure/weight range), need to be between two of the 10 settings, or just feel like you want more clicky feels as you move through the range?
 

Irck

Likes Bikes
Yes, dismiss the obvious.

Why are you asking about this? Are you finding that you aren’t able to get the shock performing well (e.g. you are outside of the ‘design’ pressure/weight range), need to be between two of the 10 settings, or just feel like you want more clicky feels as you move through the range?
Hardly dismissing the obvious, just not sure what the point of the comment was. Never have I ever heard anyone ever describe individual clicks of rebound as ‘settings‘. Who says: “Set your rebound to the 4th setting?”

Regarding wanting “more clicky feels”, I was asking because the rebound range is dramatically different to any other shock I’ve owned (Rockshox or Fox) so I wanted to make sure that the knob wasn’t sticking and I was supposed to have the usual 20 clicks and find the correct fully in position. Even though it would have been a smaller range, 10 is a round number and would have made sense. 9 seemed quite unusual, especially after initially being told it should have 10. Having 10% less adjustment straight out of the box seemed somewhat defective...

Additionally, Norco has a pretty comprehensive setup guide for their new bikes. https://www.norco.com/bike-setup-guide/bikes/ These recommendations obviously start from a fully in position so I wanted to ensure I had the right range. So far they seem reasonably good.

The reason why I posted on here was because initially the Norco response I got gave a different range to what I was getting so I wanted to check what others had. In the mean time I heard back from Norco with an updated response that I posted here.

The 9 click range likely comes from the fact that it’s a custom shock for Norco and doesn’t need a large range for different bikes.
 
Top