I think so, even though I am not light (around 200lbs) I find that the 7wt oil feels "plusher" to me going through nasty rock gardens than when I have 10wt in my fork. My feeling may be that some of the heavier people that use heavy oil aren't necessarily always very agressive-riders, and the agressive riders are the ones that will notice a lack of plushness when they push it through rock gardens, and the range of tuning with 7wt oil seems to be very wide to me.keen said:
The 2nd point is that people often run "too much" rebound damping. They jack it up because when they are tuning it they don't want it to feel "too bouncy" and they do it by testing it at slow speed, or by not even riding at all (by just pushing down). When I adjust my marzocchis so that they feel as "plush" as possible they feel fairly "bouncy" at lower speeds. This kind of makes them seem "over-active" and the bob is increased some, but the benefit is that at high speed through nasty rock gardens it remains very plush and not harsh. I find the threshold between the fork starting to "pack up" and being "very plush" through rock gardens to be a little tricky to find, and that as a general rule you want to use LESS rebound damping than you THINK you need at a standstill. That usually gets you pointed in the correct direction.
As far as springs, what you are really looking at is sag. Sag on a fork should be about 20-25% of total travel, not any more. If the springs you are running right now acheive this, then you should be fine, if you are running like 10-15% sag with those springs, then yes a spring change may help you out and make it plusher, and you'd have to raise that oil level slightly to keep it from bottoming of course. Sag is what we are looking at with springs though, small adjustments to sag can be made with the preload of course.
