I am building up a tough enduro/alps bike in my cotic rocket. Aleady have a marzocchi coil fork, and other hopefully bomb-proof bits and bobs and the final part I have is a choice of 2 new marzocchi shocks.
2015 roco tst air OR 2013 roco tst coil
both have plenty of adjustability and with the cheap price i have been offered on the coil shock, i could afford a ti spring.

the rocket has a good progressive rear suspension and works better with a slow rebound

my line choice is usually daft, but slowly getting better as I’ve been loving my hardtail riding for 6 months

does anyone have experience with the above shocks? or come up with a decent argument for either to help me on my way?

Coil or a DH air can as you’ve managed to put a coil on up front. They can feel front heavy with a small air can on the back.

I’d go with a Double Barrel if you want a coil, or a Vivid Air if you want to run an Air shock DH can. Don’t bother with Double Barrel Air CS as it lacks proper rebound shims.

I can’t stretch to spending on a DB coil !

What’s your experience with air cans? A few years back I swore off air cans for good after experiencing a DHX3. Now they are so good I can’t imagine ever running a coil on anything other than a DH race bike, and even then if I was ding a full build I’d probably go for air.

I haven’t got a great amount of experience riding in the Alps but for Enduro races I think the ability to flick a switch for an extended road climb or add some “pro-pedal” for a section that’s very pedally or a mixture would be of more value than the extra plushness of a coil.

If you get the right tune for your bike air shocks can be genuinely brilliant. I can imagine if you are hammering out lift assisted runs on alpine dh tracks a coil would be the way to go, but for everything else…air. I have no recent experience of a Roco, although the ones I tried a few years back were okay. FWIW I wouldn’t just choose one to match my forks.

Does it have to be a Roco? My experience of having a Roco WC on my old DH bike left me thinking that they’re a bit shite

Coils just seem to have more….. I’m running a Cane DB Coil and for the big days out it just works and you have full adjustablity in all directions..Downside is they are heavy. For local XC rides I use a fox RP23 which is lighter shimmed and runs off set bushes but it hasn’t got that bottomless feeling to it.

Not run anything but air for a few years now, can’t fault the performance and the weight (not that it seems to be a concern for you)

There was a Tim Flooks/SRAM tech chat vid from EWS Whistler where he was going through the new RS stuff – of their racers only a tiny handful were clinging onto coil, the rest were on the new air stuff which was offering them what they needed with the tuning and the reduced weight.

To decide you probably need to consider
What do you want from the shock?
What does the current shock do wrong – have you ridden it with the stock shock yet?
Can you get one or the other tuned to what you want?

Thanks guys for the help
The shock I have been running was a knackered old rp23 which just wouldn’t cut it any more.
I’m not really looking at doing double diamond downhill runs as my talent would run out pretty quickly I would think. But definitely the rockier Alps and lakes tracks and a little bit of bike park.
You are right that I’m not really concerned about the weight, just what’s the best for my riding.
Probably leaning towards the air thinking about it a bit more now.
The comment about all but a few of the the EWS guys running air probably does it for me

I’ll have to post up a pic of the build (hopefully next week) !

How about getting your RP23 rebuilt with Push internals or the like? Would cost less than the upgrade and you could spec it to feel exactly as you want it to.

I’d go air these days and that’s coming from someone who avoided air suspenion for a long time. I was in the coil only camp for some time but my CCDBa and Devilles on my Banshee have changed my mind big time.

They’re plush, responsive and easy to adjust.

I’d also consider the Push upgrade – it transformed the Van RC on my old Big Hit.

Coil.

Air suspension is getting better…its good, very very good…i say that as someone blown away by how plush the current X-Fusion 160mm Sweeps are….but, just been to BPW on my HT (which is running 140mm coil forks) and fell in love again with how they just never get flustered!…for me there is still just a slight gap in favour of coils for truly horrible riding (and i’d class an Alps bike as needing to handle horrible stuff), if i was building a 120mm allrounder i’d go with air every time but for a big bike i’d match a coil shock to the coil forks you already have.

deviant

…for me there is still just a slight gap in favour of coils for truly horrible riding (and i’d class an Alps bike as needing to handle horrible stuff), if i was building a 120mm allrounder i’d go with air every time but for a big bike i’d match a coil shock to the coil forks you already have.

Just sayin…..