It seems that for most of the world, the problem of stuckdown shocks has faded into the past. However, us Brits are hardier than most of the rest of the world ‘cos we ride all year round!... Whilst the rest of the MTB world are skiing, snowboarding and ice skating, we’re de-frosting our cables and heading out to the hills! If you get a stuckdown shock it can be a pain, you’ll most likely end up noticing it when it’s too late as your pedals bash the ground and then you’ll clang your way back down the hill riding on the bottom out stop – no fun... But it’s something you can check before setting off, it’s worth just giving the shock an exploratory squish for a little while before setting off on a super-cold winter ride.

Just give it a little bounce (no need to jump on the saddle from 6ft up!), check the functions and generally get the shock moving around. Normally this is enough to put a tiny bit of heat into the shock and get the oil moving around so that when you actually set-off the shock it will be fine. However, if you notice that the shock is sagging more and starting to become ‘stuckdown’ you can catch it at this point and ‘over-pressurise’ the shock to the 300psi maximum and hyper-extend the shock to bring it back to full travel. You can do this by sitting on the rear wheel and pulling the saddle upwards. Once you have the shock back to full length you can re-adjust the pressure and re-check the shock to make sure it won’t stick down again.

The reasons for the shock becoming stuck down are normally worn seals and/or lack of proper lubrication to the air sleeve seals so check the air sleeve maintenance page for advice here. If the shock does become properly stuck down and can’t be re-extended ‘in the field’ we strongly recommend that you send it to us to get it sorted, if you attempt to whip the air sleeve off at this point it will go off with a bang, potentially causing serious injury to yourself.