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Manitou Mezzer: Owners Thread [Setup & Tech]

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#4,061 ·
IUSius said:
This is just another option for changing the characteristics. The person wanted to modify the piston, I proposed another way to achieve a similar result.
By the way, we have two main rebound washers in the "crossover" form factor, so we can always return to the original state by swapping the whole washer and the slotted washer.
I’ll probably even try this modification on my fork, because 2.5w oil and an almost open lsr make me want to expand/shift the lsr adjustment range.
Click to expand...
2.5w is very close to stock maxima which is labeled "5w" for some reason.

More bleed (from oil viscosity or notched shims) does not yield a similar result to increased port area. It's the opposite, where curve becomes even more progressive as original shim stack (and piston ports) begin to dominate at higher speeds.

MrRiser said:
There's been a couple of suggestions of lighter oil, can anyone recommend something slightly thinner for the damper?

I'm running all the damping wide open with one 17mm shim removed from the HSC and feel the rebound needs to speed up. I figure if I use thinner oil, I've got plenty of range on the compression side to play with and hopefully I'll end up with a less rebound damping.
Click to expand...
There are Redline and Putoline suspension oils, as well as ton of industrial hydraulic oils in 5-10cct/40c range. But there is a reason why low speed adjustment range is finite in the first place. I suggest speeding up the rebound shim stack.

If your fork chassis have excessive sliding friction, it will introduce unwanted damping which can lead you to excessively open settings (or tunes) in effort to make suspension feel more active. It is a bit strange that you have compression wide open, too.
 
#4,063 ·
MrRiser said:
There's been a couple of suggestions of lighter oil, can anyone recommend something slightly thinner for the damper?

I'm running all the damping wide open with one 17mm shim removed from the HSC and feel the rebound needs to speed up. I figure if I use thinner oil, I've got plenty of range on the compression side to play with and hopefully I'll end up with a less rebound damping.
Click to expand...
You can try removing a shim from the rebound as well. This is the typical recommendation:
Image
 
#4,066 ·
Alright, so theoretically if I were to increase the negative volume by the factor of one spacer, so increase main pressure, should I decrease or increase the IRT volume to compensate/ keep the balance? Logic says more mid stroke support, so I should reduce the volume/ make it shorter. I'm running my fork at 170 so I believe for best balance it should be slightly reduced anyway, assuming it was optimised for 180mm.
 
#4,067 ·
So I went and removed one of the rebound shims, now I'm left with
Piston
13x0,1
8,5x0,2
8,5x0,2
Clamping plate

I made a comparison video for reference, I see that I was right not to do this mod before for the sake of being able to share my bike with someone heavier, it rebounds really quickly now, had to add two clicks from fully open to get it to my liking, will see how it behaves on the trails.

In the video the low speed bypass is completely shut. Oil is 2.5w Motorex just as before, also vacuum bled, the fork chassis was untouched for the sake of not spoiling the experiment, I only removed the damper, pressure is 30 psi main, 60 IRT, but I'm not really pressing deep enough to engage the IRT.

 
#4,068 ·
Hey guys, I'm struggling to get my Mezzer Pro setup on my Dreadnought v2. It feels decent on the medium to small hits, although it is pretty harsh on the fast big hits such as a high speed rooty section with big holes. I tried messing around with Rebound, Compression, and even increasing irt 5psi, and I wasn't able to get it where I wanted.

Current settings (Measured from closed.)
IRT: 75psi
Main: 50psi
LSC -1
HSC -1
Rebound: -7
Sag: 27%

It seems I may be riding kinda low in the travel. What are your thoughts on what to try next?
 
#4,069 ·
thebigoutside MTB said:
Hey guys, I'm struggling to get my Mezzer Pro setup on my Dreadnought v2. It feels decent on the medium to small hits, although it is pretty harsh on the fast big hits such as a high speed rooty section with big holes. I tried messing around with Rebound, Compression, and even increasing irt 5psi, and I wasn't able to get it where I wanted.

Current settings (Measured from closed.)
IRT: 75psi
Main: 50psi
LSC -1
HSC -1
Rebound: -7
Sag: 27%

It seems I may be riding kinda low in the travel. What are your thoughts on what to try next?
Click to expand...
Weight & fork travel?
Also did you run any of the first post improvements (Q-ring 214 change etc)?

oren
 
#4,072 ·
thebigoutside MTB said:
160lbs, 170mm travel. Only mod is burnished bushings. The fork felt good on my Nomad before, but I'm struggling on this bike.
Click to expand...
When burnishing, did you check with the wheel in? When I first burnished mine I found that putting the wheel in made a big difference and removing some paint from the dropouts improved the alignment.

What you're describing is a bit what I've been struggling with on my Mezzer. I tried playing with the compression shim stack to soften it up without really solving that issue. One thing I noticed is that the fork seems to use about the same amount of travel on the harsh hits - across air pressures and compression settings. I think it's coming down to the fork binding up on those hard/fast hits.

I'm off the bike for a few weeks after a crash and have been servicing both of my forks, and the bushing difference between my Mezzer and my Mattoc was night and day. I had to hold the CSU on my Mattoc to prevent it from free falling and clanging into the lowers, while on my Mezzer the CSU slowly went into the lowers due to gravity*. I had burnished before with a .07 head and may have been more conservative than needed. I went up to a .1 head and there was a noticeable improvement. I'm hoping to be able to ride again over the weekend to test the results.

*One caveat here: each side of the fork feels great when tested independently, but when I have both legs in the lowers, there's still a spot where I have to tap it to get it to fall. I think there's a small misalignment in either my CSU or lowers causing that, which I'm not sure how to fix short of sending to a suspension specialist to test/repress the stanchions into the CSU. I'm tempted to go up another burnishing size, but unsure if that will be going a step too far. So this might all be unique to my fork and ymmv.

Out of curiosity: what is the head angle of the Nomad vs the Dreadnaught?
 
#4,073 ·
jester6578 said:
When burnishing, did you check with the wheel in? When I first burnished mine I found that putting the wheel in made a big difference and removing some paint from the dropouts improved the alignment.

What you're describing is a bit what I've been struggling with on my Mezzer. I tried playing with the compression shim stack to soften it up without really solving that issue. One thing I noticed is that the fork seems to use about the same amount of travel on the harsh hits - across air pressures and compression settings. I think it's coming down to the fork binding up on those hard/fast hits.

I'm off the bike for a few weeks after a crash and have been servicing both of my forks, and the bushing difference between my Mezzer and my Mattoc was night and day. I had to hold the CSU on my Mattoc to prevent it from free falling and clanging into the lowers, while on my Mezzer the CSU slowly went into the lowers due to gravity*. I had burnished before with a .07 head and may have been more conservative than needed. I went up to a .1 head and there was a noticeable improvement. I'm hoping to be able to ride again over the weekend to test the results.

*One caveat here: each side of the fork feels great when tested independently, but when I have both legs in the lowers, there's still a spot where I have to tap it to get it to fall. I think there's a small misalignment in either my CSU or lowers causing that, which I'm not sure how to fix short of sending to a suspension specialist to test/repress the stanchions into the CSU. I'm tempted to go up another burnishing size, but unsure if that will be going a step too far. So this might all be unique to my fork and ymmv.

Out of curiosity: what is the head angle of the Nomad vs the Dreadnaught?
Click to expand...
Yeah no stiction. I'm running my buddies fork from Vincent Speed Works and I think he went to 0.07 on this one. I don't think stiction is the issue. Something that I just found out is that the shock on the bike I think is setup wrong. I guess High Pivots like very little compression and I'm running a lot of it right now which might be pitching the weight to the fork which might be why it seems to be diving into the travel making the big hits feel harsh. So I will mess with that and see where that leaves the fork. It just makes sense that that is coursing the issue. But we will see.

Nomad is 63.5
Dreadnought is 63.1
 
#4,074 ·
thebigoutside MTB said:
Hey guys, I'm struggling to get my Mezzer Pro setup on my Dreadnought v2. It feels decent on the medium to small hits, although it is pretty harsh on the fast big hits such as a high speed rooty section with big holes. I tried messing around with Rebound, Compression, and even increasing irt 5psi, and I wasn't able to get it where I wanted.

Current settings (Measured from closed.)
IRT: 75psi
Main: 50psi
LSC -1
HSC -1
Rebound: -7
Sag: 27%

It seems I may be riding kinda low in the travel. What are your thoughts on what to try next?
Click to expand...
Heya 👋

Take this with a grain of salt, since my setup isn't great.
From my bracketing, it seems that LSC and HSC interact with each other heavily once you go to 3 clicks of HSC.
I found two settings, that work well for me, for the damper:
compression from fully open
1) HSC 3 LSC 1
2) HSC 2 LSC 8

If you would need more progression, it should be fine to adjust IRT by 10 (or even 15) psi. Adjustments to the IRT don't really have an effect in small pressure changes.
 
#4,075 ·
piciu256 said:
Alright, so theoretically if I were to increase the negative volume by the factor of one spacer, so increase main pressure, should I decrease or increase the IRT volume to compensate/ keep the balance? Logic says more mid stroke support, so I should reduce the volume/ make it shorter. I'm running my fork at 170 so I believe for best balance it should be slightly reduced anyway, assuming it was optimised for 180mm.
Click to expand...
I'm not quite sure what you are asking about. The only spacers in the "negative" chamber are the travel spacers and the two air chambers are balanced rather than a "negative pressure" chamber. The travel spacer takes up the majority of that "added volume" and I doubt the change would meaningfully impact how the fork functions. I also can't think of a way to meaningfully change the volume of that chamber.
 
#4,076 ·
If I were to guess, it's the preloaded HSC that makes you struggle, try backing that off and see how that feels, you may want to get a stiffer shim stack, or run more spring rate for desired support without harshness on braking bumps.
 
#4,078 ·
thebigoutside MTB said:
I tried it open and that didn't fix the issue.
Click to expand...
thebigoutside MTB said:
Hey guys, I'm struggling to get my Mezzer Pro setup on my Dreadnought v2. It feels decent on the medium to small hits, although it is pretty harsh on the fast big hits such as a high speed rooty section with big holes. I tried messing around with Rebound, Compression, and even increasing irt 5psi, and I wasn't able to get it where I wanted.

Current settings (Measured from closed.)
IRT: 75psi
Main: 50psi
LSC -1
HSC -1
Rebound: -7
Sag: 27%

It seems I may be riding kinda low in the travel. What are your thoughts on what to try next?
Click to expand...
If it's a high speed rooty section, then we might say it is repeated medium hits(?). In that case maybe consider the progressive damping of the MC2....at least I'm about the same weight and had that problem with packing in rough sections. I now run Dougal's Pick and Mix kit, problem solved.

Maybe first try reducing the rebound shim stack (search around for some posts) or, make it easy and get Dougal's kit.

Only 1 click out from closed on HSC is a lot too and is preloading the shims (I don't recommend that at least).

That said, weird it was good on another bike. Are the front/rear centre measurements much different, different size frame? The Dread will grow a bit too, putting a bit more weight on the front I suppose....

27% sag is potentially a lot...also weird, I weigh a little bit more and run 54/84, 170mm, and have less sag (I guess <20%, I don't really check that), but I also run a quite large/long frame for my height.
 
#4,079 ·
Klous1 said:
If it's a high speed rooty section, then we might say it is repeated medium hits(?). In that case maybe consider the progressive damping of the MC2....at least I'm about the same weight and had that problem with packing in rough sections. I now run Dougal's Pick and Mix kit, problem solved.

Maybe first try reducing the rebound shim stack (search around for some posts) or, make it easy and get Dougal's kit.

Only 1 click out from closed on HSC is a lot too and is preloading the shims (I don't recommend that at least).

That said, weird it was good on another bike. Are the front/rear centre measurements much different, different size frame? The Dread will grow a bit too, putting a bit more weight on the front I suppose....

27% sag is potentially a lot...also weird, I weigh a little bit more and run 54/84, 170mm, and have less sag (I guess <20%, I don't really check that), but I also run a quite large/long frame for my height.
Click to expand...
I wrote that wrong above. Its -1 LSC, -1HSC from open. They are both almost open. So that probably changes things haha
I did get a smaller frame as I was riding a size up before and wanted to go back to a smaller bike. But it is actually around the same rear center and wheelbase. Reach is the only thing that changed much.
 
#4,080 ·
thebigoutside MTB said:
I wrote that wrong above. Its -1 LSC, -1HSC from open. They are both almost open. So that probably changes things haha
I did get a smaller frame as I was riding a size up before and wanted to go back to a smaller bike. But it is actually around the same rear center and wheelbase. Reach is the only thing that changed much.
Click to expand...
If LSC and HSC are fully open then there's going to be massive bleed past the HSC shims so unless you are 50kg its likely your underdamped on both low and high speed compression. Remember more LSC reduces bleed and hence forces more oil via the HSC shim circuit... They both affect each other. LSC is chassis control and HSC is for wheel following terrain at speed. If its harsh at speed and you're already ruled out spring rate (eg air pressure) then is likely packing from not enough HSC or too much rebound of potentially both. Close your LSC to 1 or 2 clicks from closed (fully CW) to raise the HSC curve then add preload via the HSC by closing CW. Find a bit of chunk that unsettles the bike and continually rerun it and change the settings to get a feel for what's what. You can set up your bike pretty well like this by bracketing the Gen settings. If you rerun a section and no matter what you do it feels harsh then I'd look at checking chassis alignment.
 
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