You have a new snowmobile, and you feel it is not living to its potential. It seems too bouncy. It seems too stiff. The weight balance does not seem right. The ride does not feel quality. All of these are issues to do with your suspension. Setting it up correctly is the difference between a bad day out or a great day out.
When your snowmobile rolled out of the dealers, it was set up for the average person. Doing this is not a mistake by the manufacturer of the snowmobile. They know most people won’t touch their suspension so if they have it right(ish) for a vast swathe of buyers. How many of us though are the average person? It is then pretty likely then that we will have to adjust the suspension on our sled.
Do you know the basics of suspension? If you don’t, it will be a good idea to familiarise yourself with the topic. Thankfully we are going to give you a little help there. Making your snowmobile truly yours.
Your suspension is designed to control the transfer of weight around your snowmobile. If you feel you are being thrown about, then your suspension is set up incorrectly. You should feel comfortable on your sled. Comfort means your suspension is working for you.
Setting up snowmobile suspension
Looking at your suspension can be mind-boggling. There are linkages everywhere. There are knobs, collars, springs… What do you do with them? The first thing is to realize that no matter how complex your suspension looks, there are a few straightforward tips that will help set your sled up.
- Get your owner manual out. Read this before you touch anything. Check what your manufacturer has listed as recommended settings. The manual is your bible and will make everything easier in the long run. It might seem boring but read it.
- Look at your compression and rebound settings. Set all of them to the halfway point. Halfway is a simple place to start and give you a good grounding on what is happening.
- You need to set your ride height to where your manufacturer’s level. Your suspension will have a set range of travel where it works effectively. You want to be at this setting.
- You use your springs to set ride height. You will find some that have infinite settings, collar, and others that have fixed positions, cam style. Your springs are designed to bring your sled to the correct ride height. Your manual will tell you how to measure ride height. Use the collar or the cams to set the correct ride height.
- If your sled when you sit on it always sits low, take it back and ask for a heavier spring to be fitted.
- Now go back to your compression clickers. Set them all to zero. Zero means you have a perfect baseline from which to work. Don’t try and cheat this step by not going all the way to full soft.
- Now you want to go ride. You want to find a bumpy section of trail and ride through at your normal speed, don’t try and be macho or timid here.
- If your sled keeps bottoming out, add a few clicks of compression. Remember on bigger bumps. Your suspension should bottom out. That is the reassuring sign that it works. You have spent money on this so make sure you feel your money working.
- Repeat this, never touching the spring, until your sled resists bottoming on all but big bumps. It should still feel plush.
- Keep a note of where you set your compression. You now have your standard setting, and now you can fine-tune your compression for different conditions.
- Now we can set rebound. Setting rebound is the part where most people run away and forget to take their time or panic. Trust me. It is pretty simple. You need to understand rebound. Rebound is the time it takes your compressed shock to come back to your ride height. You want to set rebound time so your skis can follow the terrain. You also don’t want this to happen too fast, or you’ll be shaken about like a ragdoll. Too slow and the sled will feel stiff. If the rebound is too slow, you’ll find that you start to lose travel. This is called packing up. If this happens to you, take back your rebound setting, your travel should come back.
- Note your rebound setting once you have it dialed. Now you know your ride height, compression, and rebound settings. This is the basis to make all future decisions.
Snow Trax has a great video explaining this, give it a watch as well.
Suspension terms
You have now set your sled at an optimal riding position. Go ride and get used to it. Have fun. By doing this, you have a great starting point for your new sled. You should also have a hands-on experience where everything is, guided by the manual. Let us now look at things in more depth.
- Preload – You will have just discovered preload, it is not a scary term. Preload was when you adjusted the spring to its correct position. If we had called it preload above you might have gotten scared. So we tricked you. Your preload raises your suspension and keeps your suspension near the top of its travel.
- Compression – Compression is the name given to how fluid regulates the way suspension moves through its travel. Think of a cafetière. You use pressure to move the liquid through a mesh. If the mesh had more holes, the coffee would flow through faster. Which is like faster compression and vice versa. See it is simple.
- Rebound – After compression comes rebound if it doesn’t you need new suspension. Rebound is also like compression and requires fluid. Our French Press coffee filter is the same here. More holes faster rebound. Basically, your clicks add or take away holes to speed up or slow down rebound and compression.
- Coil/Spring – These terms are interchangeable. The springs are what set your ride height and hold your weight when you are on your sled. They also reduce the bounce when your suspension rebounds.
- Shock – Your shocks are what keep your skis at the front on the ground. At the back, they keep your track on the ground. They also control the movement of your springs.
- Limiter straps – As you might guess from the name, they limit shock movement.
Snowmobile suspension troubleshooting
These are the most common terms you will hear people talk about when they mention suspension. You now have a basis for knowing what you are talking about and how to do a basic suspension set up. Good on you. What about common problems though?
- Your snowmobile’s rear end raises up easily and then drops with little effort. Your buddies will probably tell you your shock has failed. It very probably hasn’t. It might need a charge but much more likely is that your ride height settings are wrong. Use the basic setup above and eliminate the problem.
- Your steering feels heavy. Heavy steering is not an easy problem to solve as there can be many issues affecting it. The simplest solution is to check your preload and start from there. Check your rear preload is not causing a load transfer to the front.
- When you accelerate out of a turn your inner ski lifts. Double check your ride height. Then check that you have a good balance between front and rear load transfer.
- You feel that you sled’s body rolls or dives when you turn. Add a small bit of preload to your front springs. This might affect your ride quality though. If it does, you will need to look at new springs.
As you can see most the main issues you can have with suspension can be sorted quickly. In fact, most of them can be sorted by following our essential guide at the start. Setting your suspension up correctly at the beginning will save you a lot of heartache in the long run.
Quick tips for suspension setup
The setting we have helped you with here will be an excellent basis for simple trail riding. You may need to change your settings if you are riding in different conditions or trails. Make sure you keep a note of your settings. You can then quickly change suspension settings to reflect conditions and turn them back.
If you are hitting a lot of bigger bumps than you usually hit. Add a few clicks of compression. The clicks should stop you bottoming out as much.
The heavens have opened, and you have loads of powder to play in. You want to let out your compression on the front. Relieving pressure on the ski and help you get on with boondocking.
Having a passenger with you. You’ll want to move those compression settings to set the correct ride height. You’ll probably want to spend 5 minutes in the garage doing this before hitting the trail.
You now have a great idea of a few tips to get out there and sled with. By getting the basics correct you can get everything else correct easily. Take your time setting up. I know you want to get out and ride. But if you don’t get the basics right, you will be having a lot less fun. Just check these guys out.