Was "Motion Control" great when it first came out or subpar back even back then?

dirtlover said:

I'm not that sensitive of a rider, but even I can tell my Motion Control dampers weren't/aren't that good. They especially pack in too easily on rapid hits.
So was wonderin'.... Was Motion Control "very good" when it first came out and now we're just spoiled? Or was Motion Control always well behind the popular state-of-the-art?

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They've always been basic. A squishy bit of plastic does not make a good damper!

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dirtlover said:

I'm not that sensitive of a rider, but even I can tell my Motion Control dampers weren't/aren't that good. They especially pack in too easily on rapid hits.
So was wonderin'.... Was Motion Control "very good" when it first came out and now we're just spoiled? Or was Motion Control always well behind the popular state-of-the-art?

Click to expand...

Naw, it was crap when it came out, spongy crap. Mission Control on the other hand, that was an actual proper compression valve and worked pretty decent.

Nope we still laughed and wonder what the heck it was when we first looked at it! I feel like bicycle companies forgot that decent damper technology had already been around well over 20 years so if you bring out a damper that is controlled by a plastic tube we aren’t going to be super impressed……

Is it still the same thing now that it was at the beginning? My impression is that the tube was supposed to contribute to damping but it's been stiffened up and simplified into a blowoff for the lockout. So the adjustment just changes the width of the orifice from wfo to lockout. Which puts it exactly one adjustment up from TK, which is one hole, right?

I also see shim versions that seem to be dead and gone in the Charger era.

We were just getting out of the elastomer era... The idea of a platform damper that would be locked out "except when you needed it" was the grail that everyone was chasing... SPV, Brain, Terra Logic, etc...

Darth Lefty said:

Is it still the same thing now that it was at the beginning? My impression is that the tube was supposed to contribute to damping but it's been stiffened up and simplified into a blowoff for the lockout. So the adjustment just changes the width of the orifice from wfo to lockout. Which puts it exactly one adjustment up from TK, which is one hole, right?

I also see shim versions that seem to be dead and gone in the Charger era.

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On my MC forks (Duke SL and Reba Team) there are two adjustments, one for the width of the orifice, and another for how much compression of the coil is needed to initiate blowoff. So you can close up the orifice and ride it as a hard lockout that just blows off for big hits, or you can open the orifice a bit and set it up to blow off on moderate hits and get more of a digressive compression damping behavior.

Lots (most?) of the older Motion Control forks also use a simple rebound damper with no shims, so that's not great...

Darth Lefty said:

Is it still the same thing now that it was at the beginning? My impression is that the tube was supposed to contribute to damping but it's been stiffened up and simplified into a blowoff for the lockout. So the adjustment just changes the width of the orifice from wfo to lockout. Which puts it exactly one adjustment up from TK, which is one hole, right?

I also see shim versions that seem to be dead and gone in the Charger era.

Click to expand...

Yup the valve worked exactly the same back then, the spring tube was always intended to be the blow off mechanism where as pressure built up in the base valve the tube would compress until it contacted a plunger that opened the check valve. Boxxer team and World Cup also had a shimmed piston inside for high speed damping, but otherwise yes, the fork steve peat won the World Cup title on was probably less sophisticated than a modern yari

It was never good and was usually paired with an orifice only rebound damper.

The MOCO DNA compression assemblies would do about 18 months before they cracked into pieces. The earlier red ones were more reliable but many suffered oil leaks from the factory due to lip-seals being caught during assembly.

How does MOCO compare to the IFP system in the Lyrik select?
I came from MOCO to that lyrik but now tossing up buying a charger 2.1 to fit in it.

fatesjester said:

How does MOCO compare to the IFP system in the Lyrik select?
I came from MOCO to that lyrik but now tossing up buying a charger 2.1 to fit in it.

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Lyrik select is a lot better than moco in every way. Charger 2.1 is quite a lot better again though

Gonna go against the grain and say the PUSH tuned Motion Control dampers I had from the brief windows of time when PUSH did that were among the best forks I had in that era. I still have one, a 2009 Reba on my Ti hardtail, and it's great. Stock...not so awesome, definitely not better than Fox. PUSH tuned, better than Fox.