Just been on the phone to TF tuned and apparently the shock that came with my frame (2nd hand) won’t actually fit it properly, hence why it has been bodged on in the first place! It’s a manitou swinger 4-way but one of the specialized oem ones so it has a tiny eyelet which won’t fit any non-specialized frame apparently and I can’t get any mount kit etc to fit without getting something completely custom made up. Not really worth it considering the shock isn’t even that good.

So I need something new and there’s way too much choice. The current shock is 180mm travel and 222mm/8.75″ long. I’m thinking coil at the minute as it’s mainly a dh/fr bike (scott voltage fr30) but curious about air if I could get a decent 2nd hand one for cheap? And if anyone has a shock for sale let me know 🙂

TF have the RS Kage RC on sale at the minute so thinking I may go for that. My mate has just bought one and his bike feels awesome, really nice and smooth.

Getting an air shock that long wont be easy 2nd hand i imagine it has a fairly long stroke too?, you would probably be looking at Vivid air or something like that?

Voltage with a coil is ideal anyway, Kage is a good budget shock.

On a Voltage I’d be giving TF my money for a tuned Fox RC

DHX coil or Van RC are the obvious choices, quite plentiful too. (Van doesn’t have as good a rep because there’s a lot of older, crapper Vans out there but the recent ones are really nice.

Marzocchi do some nice coil shocks but it’s a bit harder to tell what’s good and what’s not so people tend to shy away.

Vivid air should be doable but they tend to be more expensive (I was considering one for the 224 but ended up getting a CCDB for less!) DHX Air too but they are not great

I don’t really understand stroke etc. Can I just get anything that’s the same length eye-to-eye, same travel and it’ll fit fine?

By and large you replace like with like- a 222mm shock will normally be 63.5 stroke (stroke is just the length of the travel of the shock- so normally the amount of exposed “stanchion”, you can just measure it.) But it does vary a little bit so worth checking what you have.

Also, with Voltages they have an assortment of shocks and mounts, which tbf is pretty confusing.

Yeah that’s what’s confusing me. According to the scott manual it takes a 222mm x 70mm shock though so a kage will fit no problems. I dunno whether it’d be better to get that or a used DHX. I can’t really afford to spend more than £200.