User Guide

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itself, just the spring of a coil/over shock can
weigh more than an entire air shock.
Air shocks have progressive spring rates.
For each increment an air shock is com-
pressed, the rate of change of the spring rate
goes up (gets stiffer).
However, air shocks can be too progres-
sive, especially in high-leverage systems. In
this scenario, in order to have a bit of sag in
the system, the progressive nature of an air
shock can prevent you from getting all the
travel the bike has to offer.
The shock actuation of the Sugar is low
leverage combined with a slightly falling
rate. For each increment of swingarm travel,
the actuation rate decreases (compresses
less). This allows the Sugar to be set up
with some sag, yet get full travel over big
bumps. Basically, the Sugar design makes an
air shock feel more linear, like you’re getting
extra travel.
More durable pivots
One last concern of our engineers was
pivot durability and maintenance. Although
you may not appreciate it on a test ride,
pivot durability plays an important role after
you’ve owned the bike for a while. As sus-
pension pivots wear, they become loose. This
looseness translates into frame flex, or “wag”,
which can allow the two wheels to track inde-
pendently. You don’t want this. In addition,
worn pivots tend to squeak. Nothing is more
annoying than listening to your bike squeak
with every pedal stroke. So Fisher engineers
borrowed from technology invented for use
in heavy-duty earth-moving machines; Teflon
impregnated composite bearings.
In the Sugar design, the bearings ride on
very wide axles. The distance between the
bearings, on a given axle, is what helps later-
al stiffness in a bike frame. If an axle is only
a few millimeters long (like those crammed
in by the dropouts), then it offers little resis-
tance to lateral and torsional flexing.
Even the ultimate suspension design
makes for a lousy bike if it requires constant
service. The Sugar uses a totally sealed, non-
metallic pivot bearing. The amount of bear-
ing contact is huge, and the bearings actu-
ally have a small amount of shock absorption
capacity. This combination of features means
you can ride a Sugar for thousands and thou-
sands of miles without any maintenance, and
without any noise or rear end wag.
Industrial strength
The original development of the Sugar
pivot technology was for use in industrial
quarrying, where huge machines work under
monstrous loads in a dirty environment.
Gosh, almost sounds like mountain biking!
Constant improvement
We continually strive to improve our bikes.
In 2002, we completely revamped the sugar
frame, tubing, and link. Here we recap those
changes.
New frame tubes = lighter weight and lat-
eral rigidity. The new Sugar uses our new
frame material, ZR9000. The key to this new
material is that while the frame is now 15%
stronger, it is at the same time 15% lighter,
and still up to 5 times more fatigue resis-
tant.
The new Sugar has a downtube with a
much greater diameter. This makes the frame
laterally and torsionally stiffer. Combined
with other new frame features, the new
Sugar is over 7% stiffer!
We also have taken advantage of our car-
bon fiber technology, with both carbon chain-
stays and carbon seatstays. We ended up with
a frame that’s 1/4 pound (over 100 grams)
lighter!
Redesigned B*Link = lateral rigidity. The
new B*Link is stiffer laterally than earlier
versions. However, to achieve this improve-
ment, it was necessary to redesign its
attachment points. This means the new
B*Link cannot be retro-fitted to 2001 or pre-
vious Sugars. Likewise, it cannot be inter-
changed with the Sybil link on the Sugar+.
New swingarm without ‘seatstay bridge’ =
tire clearance. By using very large diameter
‘seatstays’, we were able to remove the brake
bridge. Normally the bridge is needed to
stiffen the area around the brake bosses.
With the super-large diameter tubes we
designed, we were able to remove the
bridge completely while maintaining ade-
quate brake rigidity. The result is tons of
tire clearance, now fitting even up to a 2.35
tire.
Sugar suspension setup
Fox shocks have two springs, a ‘positive’
and a ‘negative’. The positive spring works
to make the shock longer, while the negative