Submitted by
diamondgeeza
a Cross Country Rider
from Cardiff, UK
Date Reviewed: August 9, 2011
Strengths: Feels quite nice when it works,
Weaknesses: Reliability. Oh my god its awful. I just sent it in the third time, but to be honest, in between repairs it has never given anywhere near full travel. It has collapsed on me twice, once in a nasty way on a trail. I don't ride so hard so this is really a joke. It weighs a tonne for an air with such crap reliability. The travel adjust is infamously bad compared to lyric or talas, it hurts your fingers so you end up trying to avoid using it. Not to mention it is horrible at 120mm. Skip this lemon.
Bottom Line:
Travel adjust forks are always a compromise, but the 55 ATA2 is heavy and total crap. A COIL Lyrik weighs the same and is vastly superior and famously reliable. The Lyrik absolutely batters it on linearity, ok I am being a knob comparing a coil to air but the coil weighs the SAME! The floodgate on the lyrik beats the dodgy lockout on the 55 ATA2 also, I can stand and pump the bars and feel like I am on my commuter. Can't speak for TALAS but check it out, the new ones are light as hell but you still hear about issues.
Similar Products Used: rock shox domain 302 marzocchi 44 marzocchi 66 manitou sherman
Bike Setup: kona stinky truvativ shizz spank lizard skin e-13 crappy 55s
Overall Rating:
Value Rating:
Submitted by
willer
a Weekend Warrior
from denmark
Date Reviewed: June 20, 2010
Strengths: ETA Rules. Air adjust good for fine tuning, Looks nice!
Weaknesses: Lots of sticktion, No adtional spring choice, poor build quality, TST cartridge breaks easily, Micro TST worthless. Axel lock wears fast. very poor small bump sensitivity
Bottom Line:
Stay away. i had it for 1 year and i had to send it back twice for repair.
Submitted by
ErikHo
a Cross Country Rider
from Sweden
Date Reviewed: December 18, 2009
Strengths: Durable, pretty light, very easy to service, simple damper that works pretty good, good jumper nice and progressive..
Weaknesses: The lockoutfeture didnt work due to wrong oillevel from factory, how needs it anyway!
Bottom Line:
I guess the zoke people arent up to the biz any more due to lack of a working aftermarket, shame.. This fork is pretty nice though cause you can add shims on it, to adapt it to your own ridingstyle, neat....
Strengths: Marketing value: It looks like you get alot for your $
Weaknesses: Reliability. You'll never get full travel AND the ATA feature will eventually break, like in a week or so. Junk.
Bottom Line:
something has happened to Marzocchi since I owned one in the early 90s. That one was a tank but it worked. Realize that Lopes rides different internals on all of his forks. The stock ones are just a ripoff.
Similar Products Used: Fox Talas - go buy one. Its worth the extra $, as you don;t have to pay 50$ to warranty it( as marz. requires) and you don't have to live without your bike for months!!
Bike Setup: BLur LT
Overall Rating:
Value Rating:
Submitted by
The Skreth
a Downhiller
from Prague, Czech Republic
Date Reviewed: March 22, 2009
Strengths: Pretty stiff, light weight, easy-to-put on/off axle with no tool required, easy set-up
Weaknesses: Very, very poor reliability and quality of cartridge.
Bottom Line:
I've been using this fork for a very short time. It was not super sensitive, but I do not demand it from all-mountain bike fork anyways. The look-out for uphilling was handy. So the fork done its job quite well, but it has zero bottom-out resistance. It got slight bottom-out during the last ride and the rebound cartridge blew out. Now I reclaim it and it become my sistr's new fork.
Submitted by
higgo
a Weekend Warrior
from Peak District, UK
Date Reviewed: November 19, 2008
Strengths: Great fork when they work
Weaknesses: Unreliable.
Bottom Line:
Whan they work these are a great fork. It's well suited to the bike and handles everything I throw at it, normally somewhere around 120-140mm but let out to 160mm for silliness.
But... it just too unreliable. First off I never really got full travel out of it, missing the top inch or so. This got worse until (in the Alps) I was missing the top 3" or so of travel. Even with no air in the fork they'd just come to a dead stop with about 3" of stanchion showing. At about the same time the travel started winding itself down as I was riding along. They went back and had all the internals swapped.
All was fine for a couple of months but now they've just sort of dropped so the travel now adjusts between ~45mm-85mm! They're going back to the shop again tomorrow.
Difficult to know how to rate them. If they were relaible it would be 5/5 but I just can't recommend them. In the UK at least there's good warranty support from the distributor but you'd be mad to buy these second-hand.
Similar Products Used: Had Pikes on the same bike before
Bike Setup: Blur 4X with RP3, Hope Hoops, SRAM drivechain.
Overall Rating:
Value Rating:
Submitted by
nibbledtodeath
a Weekend Warrior
from Swansea
Date Reviewed: October 14, 2008
Strengths: Good for a ride or two if lucky!!!
Weaknesses: Very poor reliability, I'm on my third pair and ATA replaced twice.
Bottom Line:
Great bike rubbish forks, 55's lead to massive disappointment. Buy and repent, I would not even consider buying another bike with Marzocchi forks. Short of recalling all 55 ATA2's how will they regain credibility. Four failures in 6-7 months. Expect ATA cartridge failure before forks are worn in, every time. ATA adjust also winds down while riding trails, loosing travel when needed most. It seems like 1 in 100 people get a fork that works!!! I hope my latest pair is one of these (blind hope).
I would not recomend 55's to anyone and would advise people not to buy a bike fitted with 55's
Strengths: Tracks well, v.stiff, easy to set up, versatile, deals with my weight well (225 lbs) & been totally reliable so far.
Weaknesses: Brake cable clamp...pretty naff.....very easy to fcuk the threads.
Bottom Line:
Bought for a bargin £330 in Jan this year and been riding it without even the slightest hint of trouble ever since. From 160mm going down in Wales to thrashing my local xc route at 120mm, totally predicatable and has massively improved the handling of my bike.
Perhaps I'm one of the lucky ones (fingers crossed)!!
Favorite Trail: Continental Trail......Nant y Arian
Duration Product Used: 6 months
Price Paid:
$7000.00
Purchased At: stif
Similar Products Used: Pike 454 air u-turn, Pace rc40, Marzocchi all mountain 3
Bike Setup: Cannondale Jekyll, with thompson, hope, blah blah
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Submitted by
Pikesrider
a Cross Country Rider
from Denver,CO
Date Reviewed: August 26, 2008
Strengths: stiff and plush. Comparable to oil when it works.
Weaknesses: It doesn't work that often. I've had the fork for 4 months and ride twice a week. Since I've had it, it has been back to Marz. twice. First time loweer TST cartridge was flipped, second time they didn't know what was wrong with it.
Bottom Line:
Marzocchi's new air technology doesn't work as good as their reliable spring and oil forks.
Similar Products Used: Marz. All-Mountain-1. Problems with that one too.
Fox 36...this shock is reliable, but doesn't feel as good as the 55 (when the 55 works).
Bike Setup: Norco Fluid LT
Overall Rating:
Value Rating:
Submitted by
Doctorpull
a Downhiller
from Truckee, CA USA
Date Reviewed: August 22, 2008
Strengths: The fork feels smooth when it works which is rare at best.
Weaknesses: I rode the fork for 2 rides before noticing that the ATA would dial down during the ride loosing all 40mm of travel during the ride. The rebound cartridge soon after broke giving me only 1" of travel.
Bottom Line:
Bottom line is that Marzocchi needs to recall the entire 55 line. As far as customer service....They have none. It took 5 weeks to get my fork back after many phone calls to someone that had no idea if my fork was even there. Additionally, when I got the fork back the travel adjustment doesn't work. Don't buy any bike that has the Marzocchi 55 product.
Submitted by
monkeyninja
a Weekend Warrior
from uk
Date Reviewed: July 10, 2008
Strengths: amazing when working
Weaknesses: broke after 1 month, losing all travel they now sit between 90-130mm, ata winds down on its own.
Bottom Line:
good when working but i think the whole 55 range should be recalled cause they have lots of problems everyone i know who has them has had to send them back...making them bikeless for 3-4 weeks....marzocchi sort it out.... should have gone for the fox's
Bike Setup: commencal mini dh, 55 ata2, spank wheels, hope pro2 hubs,
Overall Rating:
Value Rating:
Submitted by
gtisteve
a Weekend Warrior
from newcastle, uk
Date Reviewed: July 3, 2008
Strengths: feel and work very well when they work and very stiff for a single crown big travel fork.
Weaknesses: well, when i first got them they had to be sent back to have the tst2 rebled as it had to much oil in causing reduced travel, the ata winds its self down on long runs, ive had an air lock in the air spring and now the rebound/tst2 cart has broken which isnt supprising seeing how thin the metal is and how deep they have cut the thread.
Bottom Line:
excellent when it works, but poor bild quality and reliability let it down, and i know im not the only one after a chat with the uk distributer
Opinions please, fancy a set of 55 ata-2's for a little project.
They will be going on a jump bike frame and will be ridden wound down to 120mm.
Use will be street, small dj and Read More »
Opinions please, fancy a set of 55 ata-2's for a little project.
They will be going on a jump bike frame and will be ridden wound down to 120mm.
Use will be street, small dj and Read More »
Just got my 08 55 ata2's back from warranty for the second time(apparently they now have 09 internals). Anyway i was just wondering what sort of pressure's people have been running Read More »
I'm looking at buying a bike that has this fork standard (2008 Scott Ransom 20) but the reviews for this particular model of fork are horrid. :eek:
Are these forks really as bad Read More »
I am due to replace the oil in my 2008 55 ATA2 fork. I checked the Marzocchi website and it states that each leg should have 55 cc in each leg. This sounds like a lot of oil?! Or a Read More »
