Originally Posted by
wolfchild
Yes it does defeat the purpose of suspension. Using your legs, arms and body eliminates the need for front and rear shocks on a bicycle used for commuting...The only place where a suspension may be useful is for extreme freeriding and downhill mountain biking which involves doing big drops and jumps.
I don't think any commuters here are doing 5 foot drops and riding through rock gardens as part of their daily commute.
No, it doesn't defeat the purpose for the reasons given above. Your arms and legs do more to suspend the rider but there are other reasons to use suspension...both front and rear.
Originally Posted by
wolfchild
My personal experience with using suspension during winter was that, a lot of road salt and extreme cold is very bad for suspension components. Yes it may help a little bit with riding over ragged, jagged, rough, uneven, bumpy frozen surface, but then comes maintenance such as replacing leaking seals and doing oil changes on the shocks, which to me is just too much trouble, not worth it... That why all of my MTB's have rigid forks.
I have 20 to 25 winters of experience here in Denver with suspension forks and about 10 with Moots YBB rear suspension and I've never had corrosion problems with the suspension components. The only real problem I had with suspension forks in the very early days was with the elastomers and cold. That was solved by going to a spring suspension and then by the advent of air/oil forks. That's the only kind I have now and I never have problems with that kind of fork even on the coldest days.