Damping works by basically moving lots of oil through a small hole. As you can imagine, the smaller you make the hole with your adjusters the slower the unit moves. There are many ways to change the unit to move faster/slower outside of just the adjusters such as different oil and revalving/reshimming, but you have to do some internal work for that. Keep in mind that any oil damping system only works if the oil is moving through it.Once the bike settles and there is no movement in the suspension units, the springs do all the work.
Compression damping is pretty much self explaining, the compression dampers dampen the compression of the fork or shock. The importance of this is to limit how far up the travel the wheel goes, this is the chain of events: the tire hits a bump, the inflated air bounces up like a basketball and off the ground, loss of traction. The idea with compression damping is to limit the basketball action to where the tire does not leave the ground. If you go with too much compression damping the basketball (tire) has no where to bounce but up so it will actually bounce the entire end of the bike off the ground, again losing traction but this time it also beats up the rider.
Another use for compression damping is for the fork to resist heavy braking loads. Damping in general (not including low speed compression, which stock bikes aren't equipped with) only works for sudden movements, Braking is one of those sudden movements. Heavier springs are a better answer for braking problems but if all else fails, try more compression damping to keep the front from bottoming right after you squeeze the lever.
Low speed compression damping (or "platform"damping as I've seen Progressive Suspension advertise it as) basically works for long slow bumps like you would find in a fast sweeper, a super small hole for damping with a blow off for bigger hits. This is mainly good for settling a bike, not so much for hitting bumps.
How do you know if you have too much compression damping? If you are riding along and when you hit a bump and it feels like somebody just hit your bars or seat with a hammer, if you find your tires cup faster than your buddies, your bike seems to skip along with bumps ,or you find your bike chattering, you have too much compression damping.
How do you know if you have too little Compression Damping? There are a bunch of ways: if you are using too much travel, you have tons of chassis pitch, your tire comes off the ground on the upstroke. One symptom is that when your bike isn't "neutral" as in: you have to keep pushing on the bar after the initial input (as though it is pushing back). A few things could make this feeling (low pressure in the tire being one, but when you think about it, low tire pressure is kinda like having too little compression damping) but my first guess would be to stiffen the compression damping a click or two.
Compression damping and tires. If you are using a pencil eraser and you push harder you find that the eraser wears faster, so it makes sense that your rubber tires will do the same. With too much compression damping you resist upward movement, so instead of the tire moving up the bump with only the pressure of the suspension unit needed to give a small bit of travel, (sudden hits make more force than gravity so the suspension holds you up without bumps but gives when bumped, otherwise it wouldn't be suspension would it?) so you use less travel with more compression damping and it will actually try to lift the bike up with the full weight of the bike pushing down without the give of the springs.
The parking lot setup: Anyone who says you can setup a bike while it is stationary is blowing smoke, There is no way you can pound that seat down with the force and exact speed of a 2 inch bump at 100mph.. You can, however, get it in the ballpark. First you set the sag. Then you push the seat and see how fast it bounces up and down. It should only go down as far as you push it(compression damping) and return to the original height without going past (rebound damping) with experience you can get a bit of a feel for it. Keep in mind that everyone rides differently and prefer different setups. What makes a good setup rider good? feel! it is all about knowing exactly how the bike is responding to the road.
Colin Edwards started in motocross and went into roadracing when he saw some of the guys he would beat in motocross doing well in roadracing. In his novice year he campained a TZ250,a CBR600, and an RC30. He won a record tieing (with freddie spencer) number of ccs novice championships. When everyone told him his success was because he had the best bikes, he got into the last 250gp race of that year in the pro class and finished second.The next year he won the AMA 250 gp championship.That proved the point to Vance and Hines Yamaha who gave him a ride on the 0W01. After winning a few AMA superbike races, yamaha took him to WSBK on the YZF750. Then honda picked him up and he won 2 wsbk championships on the RC51. Then he moved to Motogp in 2002 with aprilia,2004 with Honda, and 2005 for Yamaha.Edwards has also won the Suzuka 8 hour race 3 times (once for yamaha,twice for honda)
In my opinion, Edwards is the most underrated rider since Eddie Lawson
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