sodade said:
Well, I am ditching the pogostick (SID Race) in favor of a better performing fork on my HT. I have a Fox 80 RLT on my truth and I am really happy with its performance, but this is my WeightWenie bike and I hate that the fork will weigh more than the frame (Dean Colonel Xlite). At 165lbs, the flexiness of the fork isn't such an issue, so the things that are important to me are:
weight
downhill performance
Ease of locking out (but don't want a bar mount)
low maintenance
For the first part of last season (and all of the previous season), I trashed my SID WC and it took a beating, but kept on ticking. I'm 140lbs and race XC.
My buddy (who is 190lbs) has been relentless on his now 3-yr old SID Team and it is still going. I used to trash RS (with every reason to), but over the years, I've personally witnessed the strides RS has made to catch-up.
Then, I jumped onto the Fox band-wagon and got a F80RLT, but, I had to sell it even before mounting it because of the downtube clearance issues. I bought a F80X instead (lower caps). It went back to the CDN Authorized Fox centre within 2 weeks: dead TerraLogic, Fox clunk and creaking crown. The cartridge was replaced, the knock removed and an entire new steerer/crown/stanchion assembly was replaced. Needless to say, I'm not too impressed with Fox's attention-to-detail.
Since then, the Fox fork has been pretty good (I did have to replace the stock seals with some Enduros). Stiffness is night and day different over the SID. It has to be: 28.6mm vs 32mm stanchions makes a huge difference in stiffness. With the Fox, you can definitely point-and-shoot on really technical singletrack. With the SID, which I never really noticed until after, the fork would often wander when pushed hard into corners, etc. I guess I had become accustomed to the wandering and adapted my riding style accordingly. When I mounted the Fox, I had to adapt to a now much stiffer front-end.
Stiffness aside, the Fox does seems to lack that supple feel. This is probably only related to the FX-series. There have been a few occassions where I've caught the fork mid-setting between locking-out and opening, or vice versa. I'm looking for something a little more active for '05.
So, I'm looking at a couple options (in no particular order):
- Marathon Race and Marathon SL;
- Magura Ronin;
- RS Reba;
- WB
I've always liked Marzocchi ever since the original Z1! Now, that was plush. Since then, I've had a few Z2s, some Atom Bombs, X-Flys, etc., but have never ridden a Marathon. Are these reliable?
The Magura Ronin is an unknown. CODMAN is pretty much the only rider I know of with one. Not light, but packed with features. Plus, backed by Magura! CODMAN, fill me in!
The RS Reba is what my buddy is looking at to replace his SID Team. Looks interesting. Might wait and see how he likes his before biting-the-bullet on a Reba.
WB....it's been a while since I rode a WB fork. My '99 WB SC72UL was a pretty nice fork, but I didn't really ride it that much. It was damn stiff (32mm) and light, but took a lot of time and patience to get running smoothly and right. Eko was always great to deal with, so I'd be willing to try another. How are the WBs?
