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I'm looking for a FS bike for the wife.
Initially it was a toss up between Bird and Airdrop but this caught my eye -
https://www.canyon.com/en-gb/mtb/spectral/spectral-al-7-0-ex-wmn.html
The spec looks great but -
[i]The RockShox Pike RCT3 suspension fork with Light Tune has been exclusively developed together with RockShox so that lighter riders can feel an even better response to rough trails.[/i]
Is the 'light tune' marketing bull??
My wife isnt a stick insect and likes to throw her bike around on the trails. Is the fork going to stand the abuse.
its nothing to do with the structural integrity of the fork, its just the compression/rebound tune that's different. I've no idea what the light tune is but the pike has always been overly damped particularly in HSC.
In the Pike manual, there are instructions on three tune options for the rebound shim but no mention of any compression options . If I was a betting man, I'd say they'd just gone with the light rebound as standard.
Thanks for the answers.
If we find that the fork cant be tuned for my wife, can we change anything internal to the fork to bring it back to a non 'light tune'?
why not just get the "standard" 7.0ex
Yes you can. The charger damper can be replaced and there are after market dampers available. Although it should be a simple case of a good tuner altering the shim stack.
I started looking at the non-WMN bikes.
The standard 7.0EX is £2949. The 6.0EX is £1939. The WMN AL7.0EX is down to £2229.
At those prices i need to compare the 6.0EX to the offerings from Bird and Airdrop. I think the 7.0EX is out on price, though the spec does look amazing for the money.
In my mind, no amount of upspeccing can justify a trade off in customer service. Of the brands you mention, you have both ends of the spectrum ticked.
You can make any Pike a light tune by buying a bleed kit and some lighter oil. The thing with the RCT3 is that the platform can be a bit too hard for lighter riders, so it becomes useless, for that reason we'd normally recommend avoiding the RCT3 and going RC if you're a lighter rider. Once you do that you can tune away with oil until you're happy. To be fair though if it was my money I would get a 2018 rev and swap out maybe half the oil for pike oil to open them up, and you've got an amazing fork for a much reduced price.
I found a thread on mtbr a while back suggesting that the standard tune in an rc was much stiffer than the rct3 as standard. They calalogued th shim stack in each.
I don't know if that's the case still though.
The rc has only one shim different as far as I know, in order to make the lock work. Yes it will be a heavy tune but its easier to get it just right.
A mattock pro with an IRT if far superior to the pike. I gave up with mine
Similar situation. A friend has asked me to help her buy a new bike and she weighs 55kg. Some shops recommend a lighter tune womens specific bike others claim it makes no difference.
In parallel I have been attempting to tune a Pike RCT3 using a ShockWiz. Following the ShockWiz suggestions I now have the maximum number of tokens installed and the it is still recommending adding another token and making the High Speed Compression 10% softer, even though it‘s fully open. Looking on the Shock Wiz website, they say that this indicates that a "lighter tune" is suggested. I weigh 71 Kg, so my riding weight with backpack etc is around 76 kg. So maybe it’s not just marketing bull. I have emailed TF Tuned to see what they recommend.
Re the base tunes of RCT3 and RCs. I have an RC on another bike and the same situation. i.e, maximum tokens installed and ShockWiz is suggesting another token and making the High Speed Compression 10% softer, even though it‘s fully open. The fact that I am getting the same suggestions on both forks would seem to indicate that the RCT3 and RC base tunes are very similar and that the base tune on both is pretty firm.