beefmagic said:
ha! I've had a few Fox shocks stock and Push'd. They're not terrible shocks, Push made them alot better, IME. I'm running an Avalanche now.
I'm curious about Elka, hearing alot of good things about them.
I think fox valving is intentionally set to not pass as much oil and spike more, that way they don't have metal-parts bashing against metal-parts. Fox only specs one bottom-out bumper and bottom-out-cup design, so with varying weight and agressiveness of riders they can't really valve it to pass that much oil, else they risk it self destructing. My avalanche shocks can pass a lot more oil on high-speed hits, allowing them to stay supple at speed, but they won't harshly bottom either due to decent low-speed and high-speed circuts combined with the proper amount of damping and bottom-out bumper design/durometer.
It's also difficult for me to set up a DHX 5.0 so that it's supple and resists excessive chassi-movement and pedaling bob. It seems you can either set it up with minimal damping and it's good at high speed, or increase the "low speed", but that also seems to turn the 'high speed" into a harsh ride, so it's difficult to come up with a good overall compramise. Differeing leverage rates, rider weights and so on may sometimes fall within the "magic area" where you do get good action, but again, in my experience the fox stuff is set up as the compramise explained above.
I've had 5 DHX 5.0s. Despite all the adjustments, it couldn't really make my Foes work all that much better. It was surely better than the curnutt, but the bike was still held back by the falling rate design and wheelpath. Fast forward a few bikes and DHXs to my 6-pack, where it was pretty darn good. It would still get overwhelmed at high speed in choppy terrain, that's where the Avalanche does much better, also the low-speed support is much better. The super-plush low-speed action of the DHX is great for climbing traction in nasty terrain, but it does lead to a lot of unwanted movement. The stock DHX on my highline was pretty crappy, it just didn't feel decent. I don't know if it was the leverage rate, but from the get-go it was a pretty poor performer. The Avalanche DHS does a far better job in every area.
I've never thought that the DHX was a bad shock (except the one that came on my highline), but it was meant to be an improvement over the 5th element, combining some of the progressive-damping benefits with the benefit of a shim-stack on the main piston and without the super-slow rebound top-out circut, it was a far better shock than the 5th, but due to it still relying on some of the same principles it won't feel quite as good as a shock like the RC4, which appears to use MX high/low valving that Avalanche has used for years.
