Sea Otter 2013: Marzocchi’s new downhill fork and shock.

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Marzocchi has some new products in the pipeline and is leading with its flagship downhill fork. This is the ‘new 888’, the 380. It’s a completely new fork, with only the stanchion tubes carrying over from the old 888.

This is the 380 C2R2 to give it its full name (wasn’t he in Star Wars?). The funny name indicates that the completely new damper cartridge has high and low speed compression damping (the two Cs) and high and low rebound too.

Artoo's cousin?

 

 

Swish new lowers

As well as noticing the redesigned crowns (the lower one is hollow too) you can see the top of the controls – this is actually a removable damping unit with user-serviceable shim stacks in it. So you could, in theory, tune your fork at a race without having to pull the whole thing apart.

 

 

New crown bolt placement saves weight

The Marzocchi 380 also has a newly designed 20mm axle, a lighter arch shape and will also work with that newfangled 650B/27.5in wheel size with a different drop lower crown to fit the bigger wheels.

The 203mm travel Marzocchi 380

The 380 fork all-in should weigh 6.1lbs (2750g). It comes in taper or full 1 1/8th and still has a titanium coil spring.

 

 

Kashima? Nope, it's just coloured anodising.

Talking of titanium coil springs, here’s the new MOTO C2R rear shock which we correctly guessed has two compression dials and one rebound. It too has a removable shim stack for easy tuning.

As well as having a newly increased shaft diameter, there’s a rubber coating on the shock body to stop ‘spring slap’ and keep the noise down.

That red bit will unbolt to tune it. Don't lose the bits!

 

Marzocchi thinks it might be the first company to have the shaft and upper eye of the shock be one pice.

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Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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