[Closed] air shock to coil

personally I can't tell much difference between coil & air, it's mainly about the damper for me.

If anything I find air better as you can get the spring rate bang on for your weight without buying a new spring

But then I seem to be in the minority who love the DHX air series shocks...

A while back I had a Heckler with 5th element coil shock, bought and air version to save weight and as i figured it wouldn't make a big difference but it didn't feel right so I put the coil back on.

I guess it's much the same as me preferring a coil fork to an air one, maybe.

I think it will be interesting to see what the BOS and Cane Creek air dampers are like, if they ever materialise. Certainly the reports from the test riders on the new Rock Shox Vivid Air seem to suggest it is possible to build an air sprung damper that performs as well and it would appear better than a coil sprung one.

What I would like explained to me is why so many air sprung suspension bikes are built around high falling rate/progressive suspension designs. Surely that means that the suspension gets harder to compress at the same time as the air spring gets harder to compress so you get a massively progressive rate. The Orange Five seems to be intuitively right in that it has a rising rate/regressive design so the mechanical leverage increases to counter balance the increase in the air spring rate.

What am I missing here?

I hear you jedi...I have a new 5 spot and the air shock ain't cutting the mustard. I think I ride quite hard, but I am also heavy, and the high pressure I have to run means that the air shoch tends to lose small bump sensitivity. It also has fast rebound, even on the slowet setting. I am reluctant to spend the cash on a coil, and also the weight factor butit would solve many of these issues.

Coil on my DH bike air on my 4x bike. I would have a cooil on my 4x bike but the shock stroke is too small.

DHX air shocks are ok if they are well tuned, but a coil gives a more linear performance but you still need them tuning.

coil all the way for me both front and rear,i think the weight is a small price to pay for better performance.I think air is ok on an xc bike but once you get to bikes that are meant to be ridden hard over rough terrain with drops and jumps thrown in then air just seems to be out of its depth (well fox rear air shocks anyway).

[b]i cant stand the feel of my dhx5 air and will be changing it asap[/b]

the DHX 5 Air is an unpleasent shock for sure 😉

try the new [b]Fox RP23 XV BV shock[/b] as a direct replacement for the DHX air on your bottlerocket, it will put your faith back into air shocks

RP23 = awesome

Whats the eye to eye?

I have non BV 50mm RP23 you could borrow to see its any better, could take it down next week.

Swapped it for a DHX 4 myself. Coils rock!

I've always liked the DHX5 air, although it will never be a coil shock it can be tuned to be closer to feeling like one than a RP3 or float. But on that transition you need a coil shock for sure

I'd rather ride a blown coil shock than any Air shock I've ever tried.

Fahkin hate air shocks!

Coil on my DH bike air on my 4x bike. I would have a cooil on my 4x bike but the shock stroke is too small.

What bike is that? you can still pick up old Fox Vanilla R and RCs in short stroke lengths and they perform amazingly if you have them re-shimmed.

Coil FTW!

Enduro with DHX air. Does everything it needs to and the propedal works pretty well. When tanking down semi rough stuff it just seems to get lost and feels as if the damper is doing something odd as if cycling the damper circuit. It is not bad enough to cause any real riding issue but you are left looking stupid at the side of the trail looking for the rear puncture that does not exist.

Change to coil vanilla R tuned for me. Not as good as the DHX if stamping on the pedals without thinking about it when standing up. However it is much better through the rough stuff and rebound control is perfect for me and never unsettles me. Zero feeling of punctured rear tyre and tons and tons of traction.

Putting a coil shock in my five turned it from a good bike into a great bike.

Completely agree. Air shocks blow goats. Coils are just luvverly.

I have just gone for a ride at whinlatter (forgot how bloomin far away it is!). The other thing I notice with a longer air fork is that its all or nothing. No small bump movement, but then when going off drops, the whole fork compresses and trys to throw you over the bars 😕

went from a fox AVA air can to a vanilla RC, SO much nicer. Shame the fox air can is fixed and I have to give the vanilla back 🙁 I much prefer a decent coil, my fox can would pack down over lots of bumps in quick succession, but the vanilla makes my bike seem to float over .. LOVELY

GW - Member

Coil on my DH bike air on my 4x bike. I would have a cooil on my 4x bike but the shock stroke is too small.

What bike is that? you can still pick up old Fox Vanilla R and RCs in short stroke lengths and they perform amazingly if you have them re-shimmed.

I'm using a pushed Van R on my intense tazer FS with an 850lb spring...

pinches - Where did you get a short stroke 850 spring?

I have an old skool 4" travel SX supercross with a pushed Vanilla R too

well, the 850lb spring actually came fitted on the bike when i got it! i was using a fox 650lb one off a klein mantra of all things for a while, but the stiffer spring is better for 4x/jumps playing about. It's quite over sprung for anything DH though and quite unstable!

wanna swap it for a 750?
I'm guessing it's 1.5 stroke

actually now i've looked it's an 800x1.55

do you want to swap?

I'd need to look but think I have 700 and 750 x 1.5 spare springs kicking about somewhere

I really miss my supercross. Awesome little bike, killed it at triscombe though.

coil and ti spring for the win

esher shore - Member
i cant stand the feel of my dhx5 air and will be changing it asap

the DHX 5 Air is an unpleasent shock for sure

try the new Fox RP23 XV BV shock as a direct replacement for the DHX air on your bottlerocket, it will put your faith back into air shocks

RP23 = awesome

weird, because I have both and they feel virtually identical

I've got a marin quake with a DHX 5.0 Air and it is currently very sticky. bloomin horrible. want to swap to coil but just can't afford it at the moment.
wondering how my trance would feel with a coil as I tend to ride that pretty hard

Air sprung shocks feel dead/overdamped when compared to coil sprung shocks IMO. I think a lot of this is probably due to the extra friction/stiction in air shocks because of the much larger seals, and the high air pressure inside causing even more stiction in the first place. I find it noticable on any air sprung bike that you have to apply a certain pressure in the first place to get the shock to move at all, before the then linear(ish) spring rate then takes effect. On a coil sprung bike, you apply a force, the shock compresses a bit, you apply the same force again, it compresses the same amount more...

Air shocks have their place, but IMO that isn't on bikes that are predominantly used for descending, or for "mucking about on" if you like. Air shocks make sense on XC bikes as they're lighter (in fact they make more sense to the marketing people, because coil shocks mean that someone somewhere has to hold stock of different spring rates!), but for ultimate performance, a coil shock is pretty much always going to win out. And like you want to get rid of the DHX air on your Bottlerocket, I've been wanting to change the DHX air on my Reign X for a coil shock for some while... Maybe I will soon enough!

Other way around for me Tony. Swapped the Romic on my 5 spot for an RP23, took a bit of time getting set up right, but it had transformed the bike. I wouldn't go back.

Went from 09 RP-23 to a Roco TST-R coil on my Banshee and no way would I go back.

What exactly is it you do not like about the dhx air. My 06 enduro came with the dhx air and I have no problems at all.
But then I have never used a coil. There was a dhx coil for sale on here a while back designed for the enduro
buy didn't, have the money at the time to buy it.
Would have loved to buy so I could compare

For the first time ever I am running air shocks - 36 Float RP2 on the front and a simple Float R on the back. So far I'm actually impressed with both of them which is a surprise - there is a vague flat back tyre feeling at certain times but it doesn't blow through all the travel which is what people report that these shocks tend to do.
Note - I deliberatly went with the simple Float R rather than RP23 etc because I didn't want any of that pro-pedal-pish(tm) interfering with the shock doing what it's meant to do. The research I did on the DHX-Air points to them being a dog of a shock.
I'd like to try a Manitou Evolver ISX-6 Air shock.

Swapped the Romic on my 5 spot for an RP23

Anyone got a 200x57 rp23 I can play with 🙂

Jedi

Try fitting a low volume sleeve to the DHX you can get them from Mojo for around £30 it should really make the shock feel better. IMHO its the air sleeve that makes the DHX feel rubbish on a lot of bikes. Its worth trying because it could save you £300.

Jedi

Try fitting a low volume sleeve to the DHX you can get them from Mojo for around £30 it should really make the shock feel better. IMHO its the air sleeve that makes the DHX feel rubbish on a lot of bikes. Its worth trying because it could save you £300.

I agree, but if Jedi prefers coil it surely won't help - it will make the shock less coil-like won't it?

I was comparing an air shock RP2 to my coil and the coil felt way better on ruts and brake bumps. The air shock felt like a pogo stick and the coil felt nice and smooth.

Played around with the pressure in the air shock and it made it a lot better. I thought running it with more sag would make it smoother but pumped up the shock to the recommended sag and the rebound works a lot better, not as plush as the coil but not like a pogo stick. Must be something to do with having enough pressure for the rebound to work properly.

Has anyone tried a coil on their Trance X? Was it a good result? How did it react to different kinds of bumps?

I changed my DHX 5 air on my 2006 S-Works Enduroto to a DHX 5 coil and the bike dramatically improved. OK it got heavier but far better too.

I left it like that for a year and now the shock has come back from a TF Tuned session and a PUSH upgrade too and now its even better than it was before.

A cheap way to feed new life into my 2006 Enduro frame. Cheaper than a new frame anyway.