Price: £869
From: Mojo Suspension
Time tested: 3 Months
Modern suspension is a wonderful thing. Forks and shocks tend to work so well it’s hard not to get carried away and use cliched phrases like ‘buttery smooth’ or ‘plush’ to describe them, which would be a bit misleading as butter is best on toast and plush is what soft toys are made from. Toast and soft toys shouldn’t be the first thing that come to mind when you’re talking about quality suspension.
Anyway, I’ll try and get through this review without sinking too far into cliche. This Fox 36 Float RLC is the latest in their line of long travel single crown fork, with 160mm (6.3″) of air sprung bounce. It’s designed to be used for your average all mountain and freeride behaviour. The fork we tested was a standard 1.125″ steerer but tapered versions are available too. The 36mm stanchions bizarrely don’t look as strikingly beefy as when the forks were first introduced, probably due to everything else on modern bikes getting larger diameter in the meantime. Weight is impressive, with our pair weighing 2070g with a 200mm long steerer, making it the lightest 160mm travel fork that we’re aware of.
Externally, the first thing that stands out is the new Kashima coating on the stanchions. It’s a proprietary coating originally used in motocross applications and Fox have to ship the tubes to Japan to get coated before shipping them back to assemble the forks. There’s a lot of extra time and expense involved but Fox reckon it’s worth it, with a claimed 47% increase in durability over the old coatings as well as reduced friction between fork leg and seals.
The fork lowers are unchanged and use the same flip-levered 20mm through axle system as previous 36 forks to keep the wheel in place. It’s quick and easy to use and copes quite happily with mud and filth.
What has changed for 2011 is that the FIT sealed damping cartridge is now inverted. This means there’s less unsprung mass but to be honest the only thing you’ll really notice is that the rebound adjustment has now moved to the bottom of the fork leg rather than the top. On this RLC model you also get a lockout with threshold adjustment and low speed compression adjustment which now sits closer to hand at the top of the right hand leg. Air pressure is a single adjustment from the top of the left hand leg and the brake mount of the post mount variety, taking a 160mm disk directly or larger sizes with adaptors. You can also adjust the travel down to 100mm in 10mm increments by taking the fork apart should you want less travel but a burlier fork than a Fox 32 option.
Enough of the features, the proof is really in how it rides. I’m not going to allow myself to uses phrases like ‘spiking’ or ‘plunging through the midstroke’ which is just as well because this fork does neither. I’m not going to trot out the lazy comment that it’s ‘an air fork feels like it’s actually coil sprung’ but that does happen to be true as well. The Kashima coating really does make a noticeable difference to the amount of effort needed to get the fork moving and while the rest of the fork is looking a bit careworn due to it’s rather hard life, the gold stanchions still look as shiny as when they came out of the box. The damping is superb, with the low speed adjustment letting you tune the fork’s response when pedalling or balancing on tight, cruxy, nadgery bits of technical trail to your own preference and it’s surprising how little bob there is while still retaining sensitivity to the smaller things you run into while riding.
At high speed the fork deals with rough stuff in it’s stride, the stiff chassis letting you point the bike where you want – in fact it’s quite scary how fast you can pile into things on a fork that is a relative weight weenie in the world of big hitting forks. Yes, almost £900 is a lot of money but if you’re after a 160mm single crown forks then you’re probably more than aware that you’re in for a wallet-thrashing whichever manufacturer you go to. Although Fox say the Float is for the lighter ride of riding the 160mm 36 chassis can cover, I can’t see any reason why you’d want to buy the coil sprung Vanilla 36 or a TALAS over this Float, unless you really must have a travel reduction option – and that wasn’t a feature I missed at all.
Overall: It’s stiff, it’s light, it feels excellent, in fact it’s probably the best long travel single crown fork available now.
— Jonny Woodhouse
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oh yes. Now take you lovely blue Blur LT2 and (let me quote here Billy Connolly from the sketch Rangers vs Celtic) PUT IT ON!
🙂
“2070g with a 200mm long steerer, making it the lightest 160mm travel fork that we’re aware of”
If I remember rightly the specialized 160mm fork (on higher end 2010 enduro’s) is claimed at something like 1.7/1.8kg
“You can also adjust the travel down to 100mm in 100mm increments”
Typo?
Nice, but that dropout system still looks overly complex and fussy compared to a maxle
Make it a proper bolt thru instead of a silly halfway bolt/QR mix and change post mounts to 180 direct fit (who’s gonna run 160mm on those?) and it’ll be even lighter.
Quite fancy a pair.
You can get a lighter 160mm fork, the Bos Deville, look:
http://boutique.bosmtb.com/en/produits/p9-deville
Typo corrected.
We’ve not seen a BOS Deville in the office yet (although we’d like to 🙂 and while the Future Shock 160 is lighter, they’re not available without being attached to a Specialized bike – it’d be nice to test them all head to head though..
Not for nearly 900 notes… And no TALAS to boot.
“Fox have to ship the tubes to Japan to get coated before shipping them back to assemble the forks”
And here was me thinking cycling was great for the environment!
drool
I have a strange feeling that energy and fuel used to ship the tubes back and forth is nothing compared to how toxic is the coating itself. Bamboo bikes for the win! – just please: no mineral fork oil based on some crops, it screws up our cars’ engines already
Any obvious reason why they couldn’t just have the tubes produced out in Japan and shipped across for assembly as a finished item? I’m sure they must have the manufacturing capability to produce some tubes!
Thanks for that review… Been on the edge of buying a pair, this tipped me over the edge and they are not bought and fitted… Off to Dalbeattie on Sat to give them a run…
Is it still a 15 hour service interval?
I would buy it next year when some used ones should already be available on ebay as a replacement to my pogostick Lyrik Uturn being the only 6″+ fork with reliable travel adjustment. But i must be certain that it has a reliabilitaeee!
nevertheless I shall gladly change it for the sake of having something that is not equipped with stupid Maxle
‘if you’re after a 160mm single crown forks then you’re probably more than aware that you’re in for a wallet-thrashing whichever manufacturer you go to’
too true
I’ve just fitted some to my Remedy and they really are superb, they feel as goos as, if not better than my 08 36 Vanillas
Yep..it would be useful if reviews included some info on down time for servicing..
Just how much servicing is feasible for the average none technical user..etc..
Even better a miles per service costing graph..if only because some of us have to earn the money for these toys..
-I’m not really bitter/jealous..-