Chances are we’ve all heard of the Cane Creek Double Barrel by now. For years it has been seen as the best shock money can buy, and as a result, many riders and racers alike have thrown these dampers on their bikes to further enjoy their sport. For 2009, Cane Creek has modified the “guts” of the shock to give riders an improved damping range, and a host of other features that once again raise the bar for other manufacturers to follow. 

The Double Barrel remains at the forefront with four independent adjustments, all of which can be flawlessly tuned on the trail with the included shock adjustment tool. For 2009, these four adjustments have been reworked to open up the low end range, while preserving all the high end range that we’ve come to appreciate in the past. Aesthetically, it’s still anodized gold and puts a smile on my face, but before I go into depth about what exactly has changed on the shock, I feel that you should at least partially understand what I’m trying to lecture on.

The four independent adjustments are broken down as follows:

High Speed Rebound Damping (HSR): This adjustment controls how fast the shock returns to its starting position after high speed shaft movement. It controls the resistance of how fast your shock spring will decompress. Ex.) Rebound damping for hitting a big drop, or ramping your shock up quickly on the lip of a jump. If you hit a large drop, you would want to increase your high speed rebound damping in order to prevent “bucking” upon landing your bike. Or if you’re on a downhill course, perhaps you’ll have some sections that “G-out” your bike, making high speed rebound damping a very important, and useful adjustment to have.

Low Speed Rebound Damping (LSR): Like high speed rebound damping, this controls how fast your shock returns to the starting position, however, this rebound adjustment is useful in low shaft speed applications. Think of it as adjustment for how fast your wheel will return back after being compressed on small impacts on the trails. Normally, this rebound speed is faster than your high speed rebound adjustment. Ex.) Small bumps on a trail being absorbed into the damper, rebounding at the correct rate in order to provide your bike with maximum traction.

Note: Most shocks have one rebound speed, and therefore cannot adjust both high and low speed rebound damping. In order to set up these types of shocks, you have to adjust the rebound speed to feel good on consecutive bumps, but it also has to be slow enough to prevent bucking on sudden impacts. In most cases, you are actually giving up shock performance because in order to set up the shock for one trail feature correctly, you’re losing performance on the other.

High Speed Compression Damping (HSC): This adjustment controls the compression of the shock for large, sudden impacts.  Ex.) G-outs or a large drop. If the shock feels like it’s too easy to bottom out, then you increase the high speed compression to stiffen up the ending stroke. On the contrary, if you’re riding a trail where you feel like you aren’t using all your shock’s travel, decrease this adjustment to receive more travel—very simple.

Low Speed Compression Damping (LSC): This adjustment helps tune out pedal induced bob and also allows the rider to adjust suppleness on the trail. Ex.) The trail is very tech and doesn’t involve much pedaling, then you reduce this compression adjustment in order to keep the wheel in greater contact with the ground. Or if you’re riding a trail where there isn’t too many repeated small bumps, and requires pedaling, then you increase this adjustment. The key here is to find a happy middle ground that provides excellent contact with the ground while utilizing the riders power input into the bike.

Now that you have a rough idea of what kind of adjustments the shock has, let’s talk about some of the features that make this shock what it is.

The number one feature that makes this shock truly unique is the twin tube design. Most shocks on the market are known as the “De Carbon” type, where oil and gas are separated by a dividing piston, normally inside the reservoir of the shock. Damping force is achieved by a shim stack which is located on the main piston. When you compress this type of shock, two things happen: oil is pushed down the shock body against the dividing piston in the reservoir, and oil also travels in the opposite direction as the main piston, flowing oil behind it. When the shock is done compressing, the oil that is pushed behind the piston (reverse flow) will be pushed back to the top side of the piston, and provides the rebound damping.

The forces that can be tuned in this application are mainly low speed, and have no effect on high shaft speed forces. So in order to get the most out of “De Carbon” style shocks, you need to disassemble it, and re-valve it for the rider and the track—something that takes time and effort.

With the twin tube design, oil continuously circulates through the valving in the shock, providing the rider with truly independent damping. The shock’s adjusters provide the passage for oil to flow through, then allows it to return back to where it came from, disregarding the need for oil to flow back and forth between the main piston. This makes the shock not as reliant on the main piston’s shim stack to provide all the damping—creating paramount tuning characteristics.

How does the Double Barrel regulate oil flow, and turn it into useable damping on the trail? To answer this, I need to talk about what exactly the shock is doing in order to manage the oil flow.

Low Speed Damping (LSC, LSR): This is moderated through “Bleed Valves” that are located on both rebound and compression adjustments. Simply put, bleed valves control the low speed damping forces by regulating how much oil is flowing through the shock’s adjusters. For rebound damping, more oil flow means fast, less means slow. With compression, more oil flow means softer, less oil flow means stiffer. It’s as easy as that.

High Speed Damping (HSC, HSR): Oil flow is managed by what is called “Poppet Valves” and the main piston shim stack. Poppet valves are spring loaded valves that only open if the oil pressure is too much for the low speed adjustments to handle. Oil flow pushes open the compression poppet valve and the piston shim stack, allowing the heavy impact to be absorbed without harshly bottoming out the shock, then opens up the poppet valve for high speed rebound damping, making the shock return at your desired speed—this allows the shock to absorb heavy impacts, while giving the rider tuned control over the terrain they’re riding. Typically speaking, the poppet valves will open before the shim stack does, so if poppet damping is increased, it will open later. This is where the fine tuning comes in!!

Check Valves divide all these internal parts, making every adjustment completely independent from one another. If you want to change any adjustment, it will no longer affect any other damping force in the shock—pretty cool if you ask me. In the past I’ve become frustrated adjusting certain shocks as a result of this problem, so I’m very excited to put some time in on a truly independent system!

For 2009, the shock has undergone some massive changes, all shocks built from this point on will enjoy these features, and even previously built Double Barrels can acquire the new guts. If you want to acquire these new features, get your shock in to Malcolm at Cane Creek, he’ll take care of you: Malcolm@canecreek.com

As mentioned above, the damping range has been significantly increased, creating a monster range of adjustment compared to years previous. Low end range has been increased, while maintaining the high end range.

Tapered needles are gone, in come parabolic adjuster needles. Tapered needles do adjust oil flow, but in a non-linear fashion. So the oil flow values increase as you get closer to each end of adjustment, whereas by using a parabolic needle, adjustments are now linear and more noticeable throughout the range, rather than at the beginning or end of the range.

A new bottom out bumper compresses completely flat down to 2mm thick! This has increased the “crush width” by 20%, giving the rider another 3mm of useable travel while holding onto the bottomless feel of the previous bottom out bumper. If you think about that, 3mm’s on a 76.2mm (3.0”) stroke is almost 4% more travel than before… Not too shabby.

A new spring slip has shaved weight and increased clearance of the shock. Now the Double Barrel will fit a wider variety of bikes than before. They’ve increased clearance so much, that the new Double Barrel has more spring slip head room than some of the most popular coil sprung shocks on the market.

“Square Cut” glide rings placed on the main piston increase low speed tuneability by forcing oil through the adjusters while oil flow is moving at super slow speeds. This is where the shock gets its increased low end range as mentioned above.

A new preload collar has cut out grooves that allow you to turn the collar by either using the provided Cane Creek CCDB adjusting tool, or your hands. It makes hard to reach coil springs easier to reach and adjust. Sometimes the most overlooked items can be some of the best places to make improvements.

With all these fancy new improvements, the same shock can tune bikes with a leverage ratio from 2.3 to ~3.6. To find your frame’s leverage ration, take your bike’s travel, and divide that by your shocks stroke length. Ex.( Giant Glory has 8.8” of travel with a 3.0” stroke: 8.8/3.0= 2.93 leverage ratio)

So far, I’ve spent several days riding the CCDB with all the new bells and whistles…simply put, amazing! My rear wheel feels glued to the ground in a way that I’ve never experienced before. Shock compression and rebound is flawlessly smooth, providing me with tons of confidence to try new lines or lean my bike harder on flat corners. I’m quite impressed with the traction on off-camber corners and small bumps compared to my Vivid 5.1 that I’ve been riding until now.

There’s a special line that I’ve been eyeing for quite some time that requires a sudden technical turn in order to launch over a rut in the trail. This line shaves a bit of time, but mostly it’s just a confidence inspiring section. In the past, I’ve tried to get my bike to hit this line with the Vivid 5.1 in my frame, but I could never gather enough traction to stay in contact with the ground in order to execute this quick turn. After bolting on the CCDB, I came down the track, and hit the line first try, perfectly. Glued I tell you! So much so that it feels like my rear tire is flat at times…

The new adjustment range is noticeable, providing plenty of room to fine tune the shock to just about any scenario that can be faced on the trail. I love that fact that now I actually have the option to fine tune, rather than play with one adjustment, only to find another is negatively affected. I’m not sure if it’s just my shock, but it’s much quieter during compression and rebound than my friend’s double barrel. Less noise usually means less cavitation, which equates to super smooth riding.

Pain Inc will be doing an in depth, quantitative review comparing the new CCDB to other hot shocks on the market. We feel that giving you our honest opinion on something isn’t always enough for some people, so by compiling results from on-trail testing, we hope to prove what damper stands ahead of the rest, if that’s the CCDB, that’s fantastic, if it isn’t, then even better. In the mean time, stay tuned to the site for more information regarding the shock test, and to find out who came out on top!

For more information on the Double Barrel and other Cane Creek products, please visit www.canecreek.com

If you have any questions, please post them in the comments below, or send me an email…

Thanks for reading

mitch@painincorporated.com