I’m liking the sound of the new 2016 Lyrik in 180mm flavour, but anyone ridden one back to back with the Fox 36??

I suspect they are almost impossible to separate in term of performance, in not in terms of price……

vote now!

No one? Come on, stick your oar in peeps! 😉

Ive been on Pikes for a good few years now and have just ordered some 36 RC2’s for my new build. Should be on it after next weekend so will let you know my thoughts.

As far as I can tell the Lyriks are just slightly beefier Pikes so will probably be every bit as good as them and a bit stiffer/heavier.

Ive had the new RC2 36 and the Lyrik both at 170mm travel and would without question always go for the Lyrik. Its a lot more supple off the top with almost zero sticktion. The 36 seems a bit wooden in the initial travel.

The paint finish on the Fox is in a different league to the Rock Shox though.

interesting. the lyriks are a good £200 cheaper than the 36s and i love my 160mm pikes, so maybe the lyriks are the answer. will have to machine up some new larger dia axle side spacers for my wheel hubs to make use of the torque cap system on the lyrik.

id love to see some shock dyno graphs for them to see if there is any difference……

Rockshox over fox any day whichever model! Agree with fox forks feeling wooden especially against pikes, and fox always start creaking or stantion wear too easily. I would never buy fox again if I can help it.

I am just trying something to make my 36 a bit plusher off the top. I will let you know if its worked tomorrow.

not had a go with the lyriks, but I am a 36 convert after riding pikes for a while. They do have a very stiff chassis, so really helps the front end stay put. The small bump compliance of the 36 is harsher than the pikes (and lyriks if reports are right) but when you’re pushing hard they are so much more responsive and capable. You just have to decide if you want a plush feeling fork or something that thanks you for pushing the limits.

If you can, then wait a few months for the 2017 fox lineup as there are rumours the harshness has been tweaked out….

well at the risk of sounding like a massive fanny, i can’t think of a single time when i’ve thought my current 160mm pikes had “lost composure”?? Sure, i’ve used all their travel (hitting the DH runs in the Alps this summer chasing the boys ‘n girls on their proper DH rigs…. 😉 and felt the bottom out, but never felt they’d run out of damper control, and they always seem to jump quickly back up into their travel ready for the next hit.

Öhlins ?

Out of those two, Lyrik. Without fail.

I’ve commented before on the 36/Lyrik debate before and my old 36 was probably least reliable fork I’ve owned. And it felt like crap. It either had no initial stroke suppleness at all, or was a nasty, wallowing pig.

It was fine when racing, but even for someone who races 10-12 times a year, that’s the overwhelming minority of the time. it was just harsh & unforgiving for all my other riding.

I current have a Deville on my bike, as the Lyrik is on my wife’s, which is also lovely (only secondhand though) can’t be dealing with warranty etc with them.

If you can, then wait a few months for the 2017 fox lineup as there are rumours the harshness has been tweaked out….

LOL they promise that each and every year. Oh this years Fox lineup has cured everything wrong with the old ones and every single year they fail.

Interesting, I know of several long term rock shox fans that recently switched to fox 36. The overwhelming concensus is the 36 is superior in every way. The 3 pairs of pikes I have had on warranty all developed the ssme 2 problems, stuck down travel and creaking steerer. Everyone raves about new stuff but over time all the faults come to light and rock shox are famous for testing products on the public for a year or two. Can’t imagine the lyrics are any different.

Rick Draper – Member

LOL they promise that each and every year.

Harsh but basically fair 😆 Every major Fox “innovation” is really just a fix. 34s because they can’t make a stiff enough 32, new seals to replace the new seals to replace the new seals… But that doesn’t mean they’re not good forks sometimes.

I’ve just got new RCT3 170mm Lyriks on my Capra. They feel amazing and are significantly better than the 36 vans on my old bike but then those are a few years old. I’m whatever the opposite of a suspension guru is though.

Same forks as grum, previously i had 2016 pikes rct3 and the lyrik is definitely better. Can’t comment on fox though. Very good firm forks, stiff and well supported when you start working them hard. In fact this is when they really shine.

Very little between the two, I’d lean towards the 36 for HSC and a slightly lower weight. The damping on it is also brilliant and doesn’t have the tendency to spike on repeated big hits like the pike does, though I haven’t tried the new lyrik.

That said, I’m now on a Bos Deville that’s even better than the 36 when riding hard 😀

The various reviews of the Fox (both professional and end user) are very complimentary about its plush initial stroke.

Yet a few here with direct experience are saying its a bit wooden.

Rick – when you first got that fork you praised its initial plushness in posts on here and mtbr,whats changed?

Quite fancy a fox 36 for its stiffness, but not if its no good

What about the Suntour Durolux? Anyone tried them?
I’m specing up new forks and wheels and looking at Lyriks and Durolux.

Rick – when you first got that fork you praised its initial plushness in posts on here and mtbr,whats changed?

It started off been plush and just deteriorated with time. It’s a lot stiffer than a pike but no where near as plush as a lyrik. I have just made some mods to mine in the hope I can make it more plush initially. Find myself running the HSC fully open most of the time. It also has a lot of stiction in comparison to other forks.

My Lyrik 170 are very plush and also ramp up nicely.

Currently have it on 70psi and no tokens compared with 65psi and 2 tokens on my old pikes.

Rick – do you think something broke in them making them less plush? Or dirt in them? Or just worn out really quickly?

Sounds odd, whatever it is.

I’ve been running the new Pikes since they first came out, up until last month when I bought some Fox 36’s at a ridiculous good deal… (if it hadn’t been a good deal i wouldn’t have swapped..)

Yes the Pikes are initially softer, however the Fox are much much more composed when pushing, yes all the magazines say the same, but I actually feel it. When I first used the Fox I wasn’t impressed – i missed the initial ‘softness’ of the Pike, but then I hit some steps/rock gardens that I know well, and the fork came alive!

I think this sums it up – last year in the Alps I swapped to my 180 Fox forks – took the Pikes but couldn’t accept the flex – this year I’d happily use the Fox 36’s..

Hope that helps – I have no experience of the Lyrics though.. 🙂

36 Float RC2 from 2015 onwards, if they feel rubbish you haven’t set them up properly.

The reality is people all have a very different perception of the word plush.

I have ridden extensively the new 34, 36, Pike and more recently the Lyrik.

Fox have never seemingly got the initial stroke suppleness right, it is an improvement with the new 34 over the 36 but then it uses a different design air cartridge. I believe a lot of the stiction on the initial stroke comes from the air side because of the symptoms I and a lot of people have experienced.

What they lose in suppleness they do however gain in mid stroke support and bottom out control which is good on both.

The 36 I was using had been fettled my Mojo as initially I felt it could have been the bushes were too tight but they said it was all ok and gave them a service. This particular fork I could never find the balance between too much stiction off the top or too little mid stroke support with the fork collapsing in g-out corners.

The Pike is a nice fork for the most part I believe it seems to do everything well and only really gets out of its depth on really fast rough stuff but it is not a big cause for concern. It does not have the mid stroke support of the Fox, but for 90% of it use I believe it to be the better fork as it gives more grip on the front end. I dont know the reliability is there with the chassis though, when the fork came out there was seemingly a large number of people suffering with stanchion/crown unbonding issues.

The Lyrik has been good so far. It has better mid stroke support than the Pike, almost as comparable as the 36 I believe. Where is does have a big win is the initial stroke again though, it is a marked improvement on the 36, which yields far better grip and comfort levels. Durability is unknown as yet but with extra meat around the crown and a larger stanchion overlap should address some of the earlier Pike issues. It also has the revised seal head in the Charger cartridge which should stop the cavitation issues some Pike users experienced.

It is worth stating also, holding a 36 in one hand and the Lyrik in the other, the 36 looks to be considerably better made. The quality of finish is far higher and internally that theme continues I believe.

It was mentioned above regarding the new Ohlins fork as well, which is currently only available in 29″ format, I do not know what wheel size you are looking at and there may be some compatability issues surrounding the crown race design but having ridden one for a while on my SJ it is a very, very good fork also.

Can’t compare to the current 36 floats (had 2014 van RC2), but can make a comparison between lyriks and pikes, the difference is a lot bigger than i thought it could be.

I first set up my lyriks identically to the pikes, same pressure, tokens, LSC, rebound, rode them without checking on sag, they track better, less hand impact but better feel of what is going on, nice and stable on steep and braking, got a real nice patter sensation through high speed rough, haven’t bottomed them out totally yet (tried to on the triple at rogate if anyone knows it), i hate bottoming out, like to have something in reserve for hucks. Checked the sag, was on about 15% on the pikes, was 20% on the lyriks, upped the air pressure, now 15% sag. feel just as comfortable and preserve my bikes geometry even better now.

Stiffness wise, i can’t feel much difference between the lyriks and what i remember of boxxers, always felt the fox 36s were a bit twangy (were 180mm tho), the lyriks are 160 and feel solid, pikes felt like a trail fork, the lyriks feel like a DH fork.

36 Float RC2 from 2015 onwards, if they feel rubbish you haven’t set them up properly.

Hmm, not sure I agree, Fox USA & Mojo extensively worked on mine & the still didn’t feel good.

I had an old, spare Deville I never got round to selling which I put on my bike as a short term thing until I decided what to do after selling my 36. It’s never been touched & from a performance perspective is better in every way than the Fox.

I’ve had the pike, the DVO, and now on the 36’s
like most on this thread, i cant compare to the new lyric.

I liked the pike, but they developed the CSU creek problem, and felt like a change, so bought the DVO, as i liked some of the features it offered, and drank the cool-aid on the company ethos…

The DVO lasted two rides before developing a problem, and after no response from DVO themselves I got my money back and bought 36’s so didn’t really have them long enough to form any real opinion, other than i don’t trust the company to look after me like SRAM/Mojo would/have in the past.

The 36’s make the pike I had feel “loose” is the best way I can describe it.

I was worried about the reports of “harshness” before getting them, and the reality is that they do feel harsher over small chatter when not going warp speed.

Basically I find running a couple of volume spacers and quite low pressure works really well for me on a day-to-day trail ride, and I add about another 5-10 psi to them if I am doing an uplift day or something “big” and as others say they feel so much more composed smashing though the straight line in a rock garden than the pike.

buying forks is a bit of a minefield right now as everyone says everything is good, be it the MRP/Manitu/Marz/Pike/Lyric/fox etc etc..

The reality is for most of us mortals, in any given race, if you have the pike/lyric/36 i think your unlikely to see any difference in time down to the fork, as things like rider mistakes/skill etc are going to be more significant.

But if I was doing it again, I would by the 36’s again

Is anywhere doing decent deals on the fox 36 rc2 in 650b flavour (ideally 170mm travel)?

Couldnt seem to find any especially cheap deals witha quick google search last night

36 Float RC2 from 2015 onwards, if they feel rubbish you haven’t set them up properly.

It seems that many on here have far more problems with forks compared to any one I know. I wonder if it’s because many spend so long messing about with them, taking them apart to ‘fix’ issues and the like?

Could it be that some of you are not as good with a tool role as you think you are?

On the other hand it could be ropey QC.

Any new Lyrik owners also had experience of the old Marz RC3 ti forks – 55, 66 or 888?

Curious if the Lyrik gets anywhere near them for comfort and fluidity. Some claimed the Pike did, but it doesn’t really.

Yep, certainly could be or a mixture of both.

Fox QC, has been pretty good as far as I’m aware.

RS it has varied between production runs, Lyriks are pretty similar to the Pikes 2016 in all respects, bar the extra chassis stiffness.

Out the box the RS will feel more ‘forgiving’ as the spring curve generally more linear.

Rick – do you think something broke in them making them less plush? Or dirt in them? Or just worn out really

Nope I don’t believe anything is broken internally.

I spoke with a few people about them and Darren at Push was very open in saying he felt Fox spec the HSC valving very stiff from factory. Also he mentioned that even after a Push tune it’s pretty normal to run the HSC almost fully open.

Yeah are on my new 5010 now and I have just made a small change to them so I will see how they go. They were returned back from Mojo a while back after having a replacement CSU.

36 Float RC2 from 2015 onwards, if they feel rubbish you haven’t set them up properly.

Go on then please feel free to throw some settings out then?.

Setup guide: http://locotuning.co.uk/tech-info.html

HTH 😀

Reviews have suggested the Lyrik is like the Pike, but with better small-bump sensitivity and mid-stroke support – and a touch burlier obvs.

That sounds pretty good, but I wondered if owners agree?

And are those dropouts as annoying as they look?

Reviews have suggested the Lyrik is like the Pike, but with better small-bump sensitivity and mid-stroke support – and a touch burlier obvs.

Yes, I would agree with that, and also it doesn’t seem to have that spiking sensation on really fast, nasty stuff.

Not sure what you mean by the dropouts – are you talking about the Boost ones?

You can get them in a normal 15mm axle too.

Reviews have suggested the Lyrik is like the Pike, but with better small-bump sensitivity and mid-stroke support – and a touch burlier obvs.

That sounds pretty good, but I wondered if owners agree?

And are those dropouts as annoying as they look?

The Lyrik (and Yari) have bigger negative to positive ratio, which gives them a better start feel, and then a (I think) smaller diameter air chamber ramps up a little faster than the Pikes, so more mid-end stroke support. Its good, but I would say that the token system is a little harder to find the perfect spot as a result, but thats just a case of more trial and error required.

The dropouts I thought would be a pain… actually in real life its ok. The brakes mean that the wheel seats roughly right, and its just a wiggle needed to get the axle started.

Cheers guys.

Not sure what you mean by the dropouts

They have a deeper recess for the “torque caps”, which my wheels don’t have.

So it appears you have to line them up like the older 135x12mm rear through axles.