Tech

Traction - The wheel path of least resistance

When your front wheel hits a bump, it wants to move in two directions:

1) Upward.
2) Backward.

Telescopic forks can only move upward parallel with the steering axis (sort of, because the fork legs flex backward, and there’s lots of internal stiction and binding). As a result, your wheel doesn’t move with the bump.

When your front wheel doesn’t follow the bump force, the impact energy has to go somewhere--often into the random pinging of your front tire, and often into the stinging of your hands, the aching of your shoulders and the rattling of your eyeballs.

Trust’s contour travel, on the other hand, moves upward and backward. Your front wheel tracks the shapes of bumps (both big and small). The super stiff carbon chassis means there’s way less flex and there’s next to no stiction and binding, since our linkage assembly allows the suspension to move independent of the chassis. Our twin-tube, thru-shaft damper absorbs the violence of the bumps meaning your hands feel loose, your shoulders strong, and your eyes sharp.

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Stability - A tale of trail

If you’ve been paying attention to bike nerdery, you’ve heard terms like offset and trail.

Offset is the forward distance of your axle perpendicular to your bike’s steering axis.

Trail is the distance your contact patch “trails” behind your bike’s steering axis.

Note: The only truly accurate way to measure trail is perpendicular to the steering axis. This is called mechanical trail (or mechanical caster). But the bike industry measures trail along the ground so, in the interest of being more helpful than accurate, we’ll talk about ground trail.

Less trail makes a bike feel more nimble but less stable. More trail makes a bike feel less nimble but more stable. The trend these days, driven by the increased capability of bikes and the fast/flowy style of modern trails, is toward more stability — which means more trail.

Bike makers increase trail in three ways:

1) Wheel size. Bigger wheels have more trail.
2) Head angles. Slacker head angles have more trail.
3) Fork offset. Less offset makes more trail.

This explains the popularity of modern bikes with 29-inch wheels, slack head angles and reduced offset forks. These bikes are superfun to ride, but their front ends can be floppy and hard to manage at low speeds. A lot of new-bike riders are feeling this, but they’re accepting it as normal.

Because of our linkage design and up-and-back wheel path, Trust suspension has dynamic offset.

At the top of the travel, Trust suspension increases offset. This reduces trail.

In the middle of the travel, Trust suspension decreases offset. This increases trail.

As a result, you get a bike that feels quick and nimble between turns and in low-speed tech AND you get a bike that feels super stable while carving at speed. So, when your bike is unloaded and about to fold into a new turn, the head angle gets a bit steeper, and when you’re heavily compressed into a corner, your head angle gets a bit slacker. It’s a perfect combination: Great handling at low speed AND high speed.

Now, let’s talk about another aspect of stability: Dynamic offset. This helps to provide even more stability when the trail is rough. When you hit a bump, say a 6-inch rock ledge, the contact patch of your tire moves forward. Traditional telescopic forks lose trail and get less stable. Trust suspension, however, actually gains trail and get more stable.

Here’s an example you might recognize:

You’re riding a pretty serious downhill trail on a telescopic fork, and you’re laying into a rough corner, and your front wheel catches in the gap between two rocks. The handlebars smash into your gut, the front end knifes and you go over the bars. Youch.

With Trust suspension, this happens way less frequently.

1) Our axle path does a better job of absorbing the impacts and skating over the gap.
2) At the moment of the catch, Trust suspension has more trail. This keeps the front end tracking on your intended line rather than catastrophically turning sideways and pitching you OTB.

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Control - Next-level cornering

When you switch from a telescopic fork to Trust suspension, you’ll feel different … better. Like you have more control. You might not be able to explain your newfound confidence, but in the end you find yourself charging faster, braking later into turns, cornering harder and just plain having more fun.

When you ride Trust, multiple effects are conspiring to help you shred.

1) Dynamic offset. At the top of the travel, Trust suspension has lots of offset. This decreases trail and makes it easy to initiate corners. Then, when you’re carving deeper in the travel, the offset decreases. This increases trail and makes your bike hold the line. So, yes, our dynamic offset simultaneously makes your bike more nimble between turns and more stable in turns. This stability is even more noticeable when you’re also smashing through bumps.

2) Contour travel. When you hit a bump — even a tiny, barely perceptible bump — your front wheel tracks right along with the force direction. This translates directly to traction: Your front tire stays glued to the ground and your eyes stay glued to the entrance of the next turn.

3) DH-fork stiffness. Trust suspension, with their full carbon construction, are insanely stiff. When you set an edge and lean into a turn, they support you. If you catch a rut or a baby head, no biggie. Instead of pinging sideways, Trust tracks true.

4) An utter lack of friction and stiction. Thanks to the low-friction pivots and the fact that linkage design means that the damper is structurally separated from the rest of the fork, your wheel absorbs all bumps big and small — especially when you’ve set a hard edge.

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Full Carbon - Stiffer is better

Our legs and links are made of the highest quality carbon — and they are super freakin’ burly: way stiffer than comparable telescopic forks.

Here are some practical benefits to our stout carbon chassis:

Practically no fore-aft flex. This makes your bike feel more stable and more controlled in rough terrain like rocks, roots and ruts. Do you know that vague feeling of uh-oh you get on a telescopic fork? You might be so used to it you don’t notice any more. Well, part of that worry comes from flex. Not with Trust.

Less binding. That’s another benefit of a linkage. The structural duties are separated from the movement duties.

Less stiction. Stiction is your fork’s resistance to moving when you hit a bump. Stiction comes from friction between your fork’s stanchion tubes and bushings and seals. You hit a bump, the fork doesn’t move, you stab your brake levers.

This is made worse by companies who stiffen their telescopic forks by increasing the stanchion diameters. This increase does improve stiffness, but it also increases seal area and stiction. So, in the traditional telescopic fork world, bigger means stiffer but also less smooth.

Meanwhile, Trust has a massively strong carbon chassis for stiffness, and we use compact dampers. They have smaller shafts, shorter strokes, and low friction pivoting linkages. The result: Trust suspension engages with just 2 pounds of input meaning you get suspension that’s both stiffer and more active.

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Our forks ride like they have less travel (and more travel)

Trust suspension does something very interesting: When is comes to stability and connection to the ground, they ride like they have less travel than they actually do. When it comes to plushness and speed, they ride like they have more travel than they actually do.

This is all because of the linkage design and contour travel.

1) Downforces don’t push the suspension into its travel. This creates a quick, nimble, pumpy feel like you’d find on a shorter-travel fork.

2) The wheel tracks in the same direction as bump forces. We can’t overstress how rad this is. Every bump transmits less of its impact. Every. Bump.

3) The linkage reserves travel for bigger hits. When you hit a monster hole in a high-G corner, you’re not already smashed into the bottom of the travel, like on a telescopic fork. Instead, you’re cruising along in the upper mid stroke, and your fork has plenty of leeway.

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3-Way Mode Adjust

Via the snazzy switch on top of the right leg, Trust suspension provides three modes. As you ride the forks you’ll learn how you like to use the modes. Here’s how we use them.

Open. This mode is made for pinning it down choppy natural terrain. The fork gobbles bumps and makes your bike a traction monster.

Mid. We like to use this mode in two scenarios. First is smooth, flowy trails. Mid gives you tons of support for pumping berms, rollers and jumps. Second is technical climbs. Your bike feels stable and efficient, yet it tracks over roots and rocks.

Firm. Perfect for smooth climbs. Set your shock to firm and earn your turns.

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A climbing switch for downhillers

Real climbs in the real world — the kind that take you to sweet downhills — often have short downs, choppy bumps and loose corners.

That’s why we designed Shout to have a firm mode that allows the first 20 percent of the travel to remain open and plush. This lets the suspension absorb bumps and carve turns, which saves you uphill energy when you’re out to rip.

Once you nudge up against the 20-percent point, the Shout gets very firm. This lets you pedal smoothly and efficiently.

You’ll feel a bit of this effect in the mid mode too. This makes the Shout perfect for new-school flow trails. Skim over the braking bumps. Rally the gravelly turn. Pump the heck out of the monster double. The 20-percent sag point is built in to maintain traction and keep you incredibly confident in a wide variety of trail conditions.

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Anti-dive, pro-shred

When you brake hard on a telescopic fork, the forces push down on the fork, and it dives into its travel. This means, right at the moment when you need a slack, stable bike, you get the exact opposite: a steep, unstable bike. If you hit a bump at this moment, your bike gets even more unstable. Depending on your mood, you interpret this feeling as either exhilarating or terrifying.

The typical way to prevent telescopic brake dive is to add low speed compression damping. Basically, you keep adding low speed compression until the diving stops, but by then you’ve made the fork stiff in bumps. Dang! It’s such a compromise: Either smooth in the bumps or stable under the brakes.

Because of our unique axle path, Trust suspension simply doesn’t dive under braking forces. This keeps your geometry stable when you most need it and — this is cool — you can simultaneously keep the fork very smooth in the bumps and very stable under the brakes.

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Twin-tube,thru-shaft damper

Hysteresis (from Greek for behind or shortcoming) is the lag that happens between a damper shaft changing direction and the damper regaining control of the movement.

For example:

You’re riding a telescopic fork, and it is rebounding down the back of a rock when BAM! you hit another rock. In this moment the fork changes direction suddenly. For a fraction of a second (because of hydraulic science) the movement is uncontrolled and random. You’re used to this feeling, but it creates a moment of unknown — of sketchiness.

This is hysteresis at work, and it’s the norm among standard fork dampers.

Because of their twin-tube, thru-shaft designs, Trust suspension has almost no hysteresis. This means we’re in control of your front wheel at all times — in all moments. You’ll feel more traction through flat, loose turns and you’ll enjoy a more supple feeling through small bumps.

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