[CaveGiant]

Hi,

Wifey rides a specialized camber evo.
She weighs 50kg and is a smooth, non aggressive rider.

I'm struggling getting a fork to work for her.

I was advised that a rockshox revelation was a good choice for a light rider.

130mm, dual air 2012. She is off the recommended chart for air. I'm going 70 positive 90 negative.

Damper was upgraded to top version, can't remember name, but it got us a shim stack. I've removed two of the larger shims and swapped oil to motorex 2.5wt.

The thing feels plush as anything to my 100kg, but is overdamped to her.

Far to much lsc/slightly too much hsc. Rebound is a bit stiff.

Is there anything I can do to make this work?

The backup option is there is a manitou mattoc pro on sale. It's the mattoc 1.


Any people who can help? I've been working on this for ages and not winning.

 

[dmo]

Mrp ramp control and drop the pressure a little?

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

 

[One Pivot]

The revelation doesn't have a serviceable compression damper. If you pulled shims, it was from the rebound damper on the bottom. It has the titanium motion control, right?

Its strange you found it to have too much LSC. In general, motion control has nearly no LSC and lots of HSC wide open, and closed has lsc and an unreasonable amount of HSC to the point of being unrideable.

Mattoc can be tuned for lighter riders. You can reshim the compression and rebound dampers at home pretty easily.

 

[Dougal]

Revelation isn't a good tuning base. Mattoc works great for lighter riders with the high flow piston and softened shim stack.
Both are DIY fitment.

Without the high flow piston it's hard to reduce compression damping enough. It's not just the weight, it's the lower arm strength which means women don't load the fork as much in rough riding.

 

[294037]

The revelation doesn't have a serviceable compression damper. If you pulled shims, it was from the rebound damper on the bottom. It has the titanium motion control, right?

Its strange you found it to have too much LSC. In general, motion control has nearly no LSC and lots of HSC wide open, and closed has lsc and an unreasonable amount of HSC to the point of being unrideable.

Mattoc can be tuned for lighter riders. You can reshim the compression and rebound dampers at home pretty easily.

The DNA RCT3 has a compression shim stack, there are many different versions of motion control

IMO friction is the most important thing to look at with a light rider. It's important in any fork but even more so when the proportion of friction is so high relative to their weight. So a full service is a must, with the new Black seals and I would also look at getting the bushings properly sized - the lowers should fall off the stanchions easily with no seals installed.

Then also take a look at the rebound/mid valve, remove a shim from the rebound circuit to reduce the chances of it packing up and riding harsh on rough ground. Some of the Moco forks had shims on the mid valve you could also remove to increase the "float" as well.

Also AFAIK Motorex 2.5 wt is the same viscosity as Rockshox 5wt (stock Moco fluid) so if you want lighter oil I would look elsewhere, eg redline for an oil with a viscosity of less than 10cst @40*c

 

[CaveGiant]

Hi,

Thanks for the tips.

It is the rct3 damper, so shimmed.
Friction is my first thought, so have been working on that. Lubed top to bottom. Trying new seals. Racing bros seals were great, but trying the skf for next weekend.

How is the air spring, worth swapping to coil?

My impression of the damping is based on the SMB suspension analyser. Wifey isn't interested in how these work, just wants it to work. I don't get any feedback either!

It gave off the scale readings last weekend, but it needed a service. Nice strip down and its better, but not there.


When you say the lowers should drop off, is that with or without seals attached?


Dougal, is there much difference between the mattoc 1/2/3. Even on massive sale, new fork is not a cheap option!

 

[Corvette]

We've been having similar issues with my GF as well, same weight and smooth, non-aggressive riding style. More often than not, the forks are initially too sticky and then too harsh mid-travel. What seemed to work well was Pike RCT3 solo air, with shim stack tuning for lighter compression and lighter oil grade. But somehow it quickly lost its plush and buttery feeling.

Recently I've also installed here freshly serviced and well lubed Fox 36 Float RC2 and it's working amazingly well. Stock config with zero volume spacers - for me, this setting would be too unsupportive mid-travel, but for 50 kg rider it works well. If you have a chance, I would honestly recommend at least testing 34 or 36 version. For some reason, we've had best overall performance with Fox in the past (she's owned a Revelation before as well).

With coil, it's going to be tricky to find one that's not too harsh for a 50 kg rider.

 

[two-one]

Motorex 2.5W isn't that much thinner than Rockshox 5W, you might want to look for an even thinner oil

 

[Dougal]

Hi,

Thanks for the tips.

It is the rct3 damper, so shimmed.
Friction is my first thought, so have been working on that. Lubed top to bottom. Trying new seals. Racing bros seals were great, but trying the skf for next weekend.

How is the air spring, worth swapping to coil?

My impression of the damping is based on the SMB suspension analyser. Wifey isn't interested in how these work, just wants it to work. I don't get any feedback either!

It gave off the scale readings last weekend, but it needed a service. Nice strip down and its better, but not there.

When you say the lowers should drop off, is that with or without seals attached?

Dougal, is there much difference between the mattoc 1/2/3. Even on massive sale, new fork is not a cheap option!

The issue you'll have with the Revelation RCT3 isn't compression damping from the compression damper. But unwanted extra compression damping from the mid-valve. There are very good reasons all the high performance dampers use a reduced diameter rebound piston.

Which is why I suggested the Mattoc Pro. There is no tuning difference between the 1/2/3 variations. Details here: https://www.shockcraft.co.nz/service/model-specific-service-tune/manitou-mattoc

Oil weight is going to be mostly about putting rebound in range. Shim stacks don't care about viscosity until it gets too thick and generates too much damping in the ports. Rebound needles do care about viscosity.

I'm seeing some corrosion issues with redline oil. I don't recommend it at this point.

 

[One Pivot]

I had a "light" RS coil, and it seems to work around 70kg-ish. I dont think you'd find an off-the-shelf coil solution. I didnt realize you could still get a RCT3 damper with the old DA spring! My bad, I thought I remembered DA going away with the roll out of rct3.

The old DA spring was great for light riders.

 

[Kevin Van Deventer]

Motorex 2.5W isn't that much thinner than Rockshox 5W, you might want to look for an even thinner oil

This is what I e been using in my damper and brakes.

Also have been soaking my foam rings in their fork lube.

They go from 10wt to 1.5 in damper oil. Couldn't find any info on CST. Can say my brakes have never felt better then after I bled them with this stuff. And my Ribbon seems to love it.

https://www.cycleholix.de/2018/03/danico-biotech-perfekter-schmierstoff-dank-mrc-trading/

 

[stereo007]

I'm seeing some corrosion issues with redline oil. I don't recommend it at this point.

Can you elaborate a bit more here? Which exactly oil are you talking about?

 

[CaveGiant]

So to clarify.
The problem with the revelation is the mid valve?
So although I've upgraded the base valve there is still work to be done...

Having a think about this, although that mattoc is on an amazing discount, by the time I've bought it, bought the third air chamber (insert relevant tla here), machined a new axle sleeve and bought a boost disc adapter I've spent silly money. Frankly not far off buying a new avalanche damper for it!

However if the rev can't be made good, then it's good money after bad. Not an easy choice.

So the revelation is a pretty good chassis, do the only problems are potentially the spring and the damper.

Some forks have more modern springs, enlarged negative or 3 chamber. Anyone know if this stuff is that relevant for a light rider? I've got the dual air. Will running the negative at a higher pressure simulate a larger negative chamber?
Is there anything else I can do?

With the damper. Is there anything I can do to mod the mid valve or something I can buy? Avalanche can't be the only ones doing this?

Wifey was very fast on a technical rocky descent, her wrists were destroyed by the bottom (to be fair everyone on RS had this problem).

So, anything I can do without spending £400 on a new fork or avalanche damper?

 

[294037]

So to clarify.
The problem with the revelation is the mid valve?
So although I've upgraded the base valve there is still work to be done...

With the damper. Is there anything I can do to mod the mid valve or something I can buy? Avalanche can't be the only ones doing this?

Wifey was very fast on a technical rocky descent, her wrists were destroyed by the bottom (to be fair everyone on RS had this problem).

So, anything I can do without spending £400 on a new fork or avalanche damper?

There's still plenty you can do to make that fork better, when I say the lowers should fall off, that is without dust wipers installed. This is an important test to make sure the chassis is ready or else any other tuning won't be hugely noticeable.

How does SMB display results? Does it give you the option to display something like a histogram or is it just suggestions? I imagine the software will have a hard time differentiating between low speed damping and friction. Friction can usually be seen in histogram form because the bin for the lowest speed range (something like<10mm/s) will be disproportionately higher than the rest. Ideally the software would somehow exclude this "zero" bin or have a way of identifying it as friction.

This is the revelation mid valve that is tuneable-

You can remove one of those float shims to allow for less mid speed damping, as well as the smaller rebound shim. I wouldn't remove too much more from the compression side though as it will make the damper response too slow which can make things just as bad. The piston ports are huge so I don't believe there is much risk of there being much/any high speed damping coming from those ports

Less high speed rebound damping (the shoms) is a huge help with low pressures, you can run slightly more -ve pressure but that only works so far and then starts reducing the travel and not as good as a larger -ve chanber

these guys do a piston upgrade-

https://www.novyparts.com/optimisat...kit-air-novyparts-pour-fourche-rock-shox.html

 

[CaveGiant]

I'll give that a go, thanks again.

I've not heard of novy before. Seems like they offer a new mid stack for £180. Quite a lot of cash, have you used their stuff, is it any good?

The SMB is quite interesting, but has a frustrating lack of units on the results graphs.

I think it sees stiction as damping as when the seals were dirty it told me lsc/r/hsc were all off scale.

Edit: not a mid stack, got confused.

 

[Dougal]

So the revelation is a pretty good chassis, do the only problems are potentially the spring and the damper.

That's one way of looking at it.

 

[Dougal]

Can you elaborate a bit more here? Which exactly oil are you talking about?

Extralight 2.5wt. It's discolouring shims.

 

[CaveGiant]

Would it, in your opinion, be an accurate way?

 

[stereo007]

Extralight 2.5wt. It's discolouring shims.

Strange, this seems to be widely recommended oil that is significantly lighter than stock plus it is suspension oil. What would you recommend then? Rockshox 2.5wt shock oil? Or RockShox Reverb oil (apparently it's 2.5wt as well)

 

[Dougal]

Strange, this seems to be widely recommended oil that is significantly lighter than stock plus it is suspension oil. What would you recommend then? Rockshox 2.5wt shock oil? Or RockShox Reverb oil (apparently it's 2.5wt as well)

Shims https://forums.mtbr.com/shocks-suspension/shim-discolouration-thread-1103861.html

I have 5cSt and 10cSt hydraulic oils which I use if needed. Shimano brake fluid is also ~10 cSt but it's on the expensive side.