I have a set of old RS Pike 426 (coil U-turn) which I recently stripped, cleaned and replaced all the seals in.

They have always been quite good on bigger bumps and when ridden hard, but small bump compliance is firm-harsh. Compression damping is the likely culprit.

Is there a simple drop-in replacement compression damper from one of the other contemporary or later RS forks that might offer an improvement?

Thanks.

No then?!

You can throw in the damper from a Black Box Revelation or similar, but the gains are pretty limited and it’s expensive and it breaks ime. If you want to upgrade, you’re better off fitting the dual rebound damper from a higher spec Revelation which is appreciably better on repeated fast hits – or a Push upgrade does much the same thing.

Yep, I’d agree with that- I actually blew up a blackbox comp damper and fitted a standard motion control instead and it wasn’t as good, but it wasn’t that far off it. But the better rebound makes a big difference, the old 426 rebound damper was a bit choky which unintuitively means the fork can’t recover from repeated hits as well as it could

Thanks chaps.

The rebound might be an issue if it isn’t allowing the fork to rebound, but it does feel as if it is the compression is causing the issues on small bumps.

I might mix up some lower weight oil to see if that helps.