More or Fewer Clicks: How to Test Without Losing Track

You know what compression and rebound do, and you have your calculated starting point. Now comes the trickier part: adjusting by trial and error without ending up more confused than when you started.

One variable at a time, always

The most important rule, and the one almost everyone breaks out of impatience: change only one adjuster at a time, test it, evaluate it, and only then decide the next step. Change compression and rebound together, and if something improves, you'll never know which change actually worked — and if something gets worse, you won't know which one to undo.

How many clicks at a time

At the start, when you're far from your calculated baseline, two clicks at a time is fine: you need to cover ground, not achieve surgical precision. As you get closer to a feeling that convinces you, drop to one click at a time — that's where the difference between one click and the next really starts to matter, for the reason covered in the article on the click scale: toward the middle of the adjustment range, a single click carries more weight than it does at the extremes.

What to test, and on what surface

Always test on the same stretch of road, under the same conditions, so you can compare sensations honestly. An adjuster setting that feels perfect on smooth tarmac can feel completely different on a rough mountain surface — if that's genuinely how you ride, that's where the testing needs to happen, not on a city straight.

When to stop

There's no such thing as a "perfect" setup in the abstract — there's a setup that works well for how and where you ride. The signal to stop isn't "I've hit the exact right number", it's "the bike does what I expect, in corners, under braking, over the rough patches I normally encounter." From there on, small tweaks if conditions change (a trip with more luggage, a track day instead of the road) — not an endless chase after a perfect number that doesn't exist.

One last thing

Write down somewhere your starting clicks and every change you make, with the date and the feeling that prompted it. A month from now, when the bike suddenly feels "off" after a change of season or tyres, having that log is the only way to tell whether the problem is new or whether you brought it with you from before.