The bottom line: There are miles long forum threads full of people disappointed with the performance of their forks, and quite desperately discussing the, frankly ridiculous, yearly upgrades from RS/Fox, and the whole cottage industry dedicated to fork "tuning". The Formula Selva R puts everything at your fingertips at a fraction of the costs and hassles involved with upgrades. You can simply tune it to perfection, and change the fork depending on the terrain (e.g. trail riding vs bike-park), with few minutes fidgeting in your garage.
The longer story: After about 3 years on a DVO Diamond I was getting tired with its never ending strange problems with the OTT. The fork worked great, after I re-shimmed it, but the OTT has this tendency to suck down the stanchions and leave the fork with no small bump compliance. I was running it at 170 in the last six months but, with OTT engaged just 4-5 turns, the stanchions measured 145/150 at rest
So after eying longingly the Intend Hero, I bought a Formula Selva R, installed it, and ... after a week of use I am kind of blown away: this is just a great fork.
I bought it because of the adjustability, and it is delivering in spades. It is very easy to set up. Suggested pressures are spot on to begin with. Pump first the main chamber, second the bottom (negative spring) and go ride. Then you play with +- 5/10 psi in the negative air spring, adjusting the small bump compliance. Being able to tune that is a godsend if small bump compliance is important to you, and, unlike DVO OTT, even putting in the max +30 psi with respect to the main does not suck down the stanchions.
Done that, you can play with the CTS. I just tried the two CTS that come with the fork. The CTS come in two families, the specials (with a concave dumping curve) and the regulars (with a bi-linear one). I just tried the two that come with the fork, soft-special and blue-regular, the blue my current favorite. At my weight, 154 pounds, I am going to order the regular-soft and special-ultra-soft to experiment. The beauty of it is that it takes literally minutes to change a CTS, compared to hours to re-shim (if you can), or weeks, and $$$, sending the fork somewhere to be "tuned" or re-valved, and hope for the best.
As is the fork rides great, hugging the terrain, high on his travel, giving a very controlled and ultra-smooth ride.
Frankly it is hard to understand why this fork, that came out in 2018, is not first in the list for many of us. Compared to the good-luck-to-you-deal-with-what-you-get Fox/RS/Manitou this is a massive improvement. In decades of riding I have never been able to find a fork that worked well out of the box. Some, RS Pike and now DVO due to its OTT troubles, never delivered, even after the mods.
It comes with a lot of goodies, including the oils needed for rebuild, the CTS and top cups tools, two cts, a neopos (pre-installed), a good pump, (although I am using my digital), travel reducer spacers, and it looks great on my HD3. This is the 29" version, measuring 167/168 mm of travel out of the box.
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The longer story: After about 3 years on a DVO Diamond I was getting tired with its never ending strange problems with the OTT. The fork worked great, after I re-shimmed it, but the OTT has this tendency to suck down the stanchions and leave the fork with no small bump compliance. I was running it at 170 in the last six months but, with OTT engaged just 4-5 turns, the stanchions measured 145/150 at rest
So after eying longingly the Intend Hero, I bought a Formula Selva R, installed it, and ... after a week of use I am kind of blown away: this is just a great fork.
I bought it because of the adjustability, and it is delivering in spades. It is very easy to set up. Suggested pressures are spot on to begin with. Pump first the main chamber, second the bottom (negative spring) and go ride. Then you play with +- 5/10 psi in the negative air spring, adjusting the small bump compliance. Being able to tune that is a godsend if small bump compliance is important to you, and, unlike DVO OTT, even putting in the max +30 psi with respect to the main does not suck down the stanchions.
Done that, you can play with the CTS. I just tried the two CTS that come with the fork. The CTS come in two families, the specials (with a concave dumping curve) and the regulars (with a bi-linear one). I just tried the two that come with the fork, soft-special and blue-regular, the blue my current favorite. At my weight, 154 pounds, I am going to order the regular-soft and special-ultra-soft to experiment. The beauty of it is that it takes literally minutes to change a CTS, compared to hours to re-shim (if you can), or weeks, and $$$, sending the fork somewhere to be "tuned" or re-valved, and hope for the best.
As is the fork rides great, hugging the terrain, high on his travel, giving a very controlled and ultra-smooth ride.
Frankly it is hard to understand why this fork, that came out in 2018, is not first in the list for many of us. Compared to the good-luck-to-you-deal-with-what-you-get Fox/RS/Manitou this is a massive improvement. In decades of riding I have never been able to find a fork that worked well out of the box. Some, RS Pike and now DVO due to its OTT troubles, never delivered, even after the mods.
It comes with a lot of goodies, including the oils needed for rebuild, the CTS and top cups tools, two cts, a neopos (pre-installed), a good pump, (although I am using my digital), travel reducer spacers, and it looks great on my HD3. This is the 29" version, measuring 167/168 mm of travel out of the box.
