Mountain Biking - I don't get the full 130mm of travel!!!

What should I do? I have a 2005 Norco havoc. The fork is a stock SR Suntour with 130mm of travel. But I don't get the full 130mm of travel, I only get like 110mm of travel! Is there anything I can do to fix this?

More air?

If you are not bottoming out I wouldn't worry about it.

If its bottoming out and you only get 110 (through appropiate measurements) then something is wrong.

Well its not an air fork, and no iam not bottoming out.

what fork is it? actual travel should be a little more or less within 5mm i would say, but that's 20mm that you're talking about.

How do you know how much travel you are getting? You can put a zip-tie around the upper slider and it will tell you what kind of travel you are getting. How much do you weigh? What springs are in there? standard or heavy duty? Is this fork at the high or low end of quality? Also if it has oil in there this will affect the dampning which could limit travel. Perhaps the oil could be changed for a lighter weight oil.

Like horsepower ratings taken straight off the crankshaft, The mfr was probably stating 'optimistic' figures based on a prototype sans topout bumpers, bottom-out bumpers and other pesky internals skewing the results :D

and no iam not bottoming out.

Then how do you know how much travel you're getting?

normally some dust shows in a ring where the forks biggest *slup* or whatever happened.

normally some dust shows in a ring where the forks biggest *slup* or whatever happened.
or do what i did and put a zip tie around one upper! looks cool, if nothing else

Ahh the fork is SR Suntour?

Dont expect to use full travel. You should never be using "full" travel, becase then you would just bottom out the fork. 110mm if plenty fine, you will use all the travel over HUGE jumps etc...but vary rarelty.

I have a 100mm fork, i only use 80mm-90mm of it...dont have a say.

But like Chone said, unless its bottoming out at 110mm its fine.

:)

My 100 mm Fox air barely has 80. Apparently it's normal and possibly due to fraudulent advertising. A local bike mechanic friend thought it had something to do with head tube angles and you get the full 100mm at the head tube. It didn't make sense to me, so I just chalk it up to missrepresentation. 80 works fine.

Al

My 100mm RS Pilot used to have 100mm. I sent it off to RS to be rebuilt / warranty'd and now it has less than 70mm. (has nothing to do with the spacer, either)

They're gonna send me a new Tora.