Fitted the upgraded Debonair spring to a Lyrik and a Yari last weekend. Increased travel on both to 180mm from 170mm.

Been out for a few rides on the latter (not tried the Lyrik yet) and I can say it makes quite a big difference. This isn’t just placebo effect, though, as my initial rides at Wind Hill and Rowberrow felt a bit underwhelming – I couldn’t tell the difference.

Today, though, I dropped the pressure by about 5psi from my old settings, so that I’m now using most of the travel. This made a big difference, especially on rocky trails, with repeated medium sized hits. In fact, it made the Yari feel a lot more like a Lyrik. I suspect it won’t be as good through big rock gardens, where the Motion Control damper seems to choke a bit, but it’s a definite improvement all round.

JP

so dropping pressure makes a fork sorfter and use moar travel?

handy to know

Have done the same to my Lyrik. A very good value upgrade in my mind. Have also fitted the RC2 damper and that’s good too…

so dropping pressure makes a fork sorfter and use moar travel?

handy to know

I was wondering whether I needed to phrase that differently for the hard of thinking, but I obviously overestimated some of my readership.

Let me rephrase: the fork is now more supple than it was before. Because the spring is different I needed to lower the pressure to use the same proportion of my travel as I was using with my old fork. This is not the same as just dropping the pressure and using more travel with the existing spring.

God – does it really have to be this difficult to avoid stupid snarky comments?

JP

My comment wasn’t entirely snarky.

You increased your forks travel by 10mm ergo it then needed less pressure to achieve full travel than previously and would become more supple at sag point anyway.
This would be true even if you’d simply used a 10mm longer air shaft of exactly the same model as the 170mm one you removed. (ie. non debonair)
The fact you noticed no real improvement on it’s first rides (before reducing pressure) backs this up.

I watched the official SRAM video on swapping the airshafts and it did say to drop fork pressures by 10PSI after doing the upgrade.

I do remain very dubious about the benefits claimed for a lot of these upgrades – if a slightly larger negative spring has such a significant impact how did it not come out in testing and prototyping of the previous fork? (I just bought a NOS Pike, needed to change the travel and spent slightly more on a Debonair spring rather than a straight replacement so i’m falling for it too…)

Major third party upgrades – complete shim based damping, coil springs etc, yet – maybe – but forks have been a mature product on bikes for well over a decade.

I do remain very dubious about the benefits claimed for a lot of these upgrades – if a slightly larger negative spring has such a significant impact how did it not come out in testing

These items (Debonair spring and Luftkappe) have had a really enthusiastic response from riders and give a big benefit in most people’s experience.

Your question is still very valid though – why the hell didn’t RS or Fox cotton on to this sooner?

the luftkappe made a big difference to my pike, but my next bike had a yari, that was much harder to set up so well, I put a luftkappe in & was still not right.
The MoCo damper was just overwhelemed on bigger faster stuff

My point was the OPs review isn’t very valid as he changed travel at the same time as fitting his new wonderplunger. Not to mention the fresh lower leg service it’ll have just had.

A larger volume negative spring isn’t something everyone actually wants.
Yes. it softens the initial stroke. but the flipside is it offers less support there too and makes the airspring even more progressive.
some folk (me) prefer a linear spring curve with good support throughout their fork’s travel.

makes the airspring even more progressive

Are you sure about that?

Your question is still very valid though – why the hell didn’t RS or Fox cotton on to this sooner?

Because its not as straight forward to increase the volume of the negative spring as it might sound. You are constrained in the X and Y axis by the fixed diameter of the stanchion. You are constrained on the Z axis by the need for the pressure equalisation indent thingy and the need for this to be near to the sag point.

Luftkappe and eventually Rockshox got around this in really quite cunning ways. Luftkappe by having an extra air chamber on top of the piston. Rockshox (even more cunning) by creating a hole into the air shaft and utilising the volume within the shaft. The shaft runs a lot further in the Z direction than the negative chamber can and therefor can contribute significantly to the total negative volume without any extra complexity and weight penalty.

Are you sure about that?

He’s right. That’s why the general rule is to remove tokens when fitting the upgrade. It’s something to bear in mind when upgrading – forks that are at the limit of their travel (160mm for Pikes, 180 for Lyriks) will be more progressive than their shorter travel versions. Thus, increasing travel plus upgrading to Debonair is two independent things affecting the spring curve.

Interesting, I’d been thinking the bigger negative spring gave a more linear rate throughout the travel.  I was thinking I may like one (not need, just like) but maybe I should save my money?

Right – let’s address a few of these points:

The lower leg service didn’t make any difference – the forks were absolutely fine when I opened them up.

The extra 10 mm of travel doesn’t explain the difference – it might have done had I used full travel but I haven’t since I changed the spring. Furthermore an extra 10mm travel makes very little difference to the spring curve.

The question of ‘why didn’t they do this before/’ is a bit daft. You may as well ask why they didn’t use a 35mm chassis on Mag 21s, or why they didn’t have a Charger type damper in the original RS1 fork. It’s called progress.

JP

Interesting read op, I’ll be changing to the Debonair when my Pikes get serviced soon.👍

Less air and more mid stroke support. Better small bump sensitivity what’s not to like.
Had the Leftkappie fittted to 170mm Lyriks and then swapped it out for the Debonair.
Both felt good but maybe the debonair had better small bump.

Sounds even better!👍

Luftkappe & Debonair springs make the initial stroke more linear, once adjusted as per instructions.

End stroke roughly the same as stock AFAIK.

I did mine a couple weeks, 160mm pike. I had to reduce psi by about 10.

Feels smoother over small chattery stuff.

Another gain is the stupid plastic bit that holds the circlip in is gone, so taking it out again much easier.

I did mine a couple weeks, 160mm pike. I had to reduce psi by about 10.

Is that coming from 160mm originally? If so, it seems strange that you had to reduce the PSI. I thought the idea was that the larger negative air chamber meant that you needed more air pressure to achieve the same sag, which in turn gives more mid-stroke support. Or are you running more sag in order to get full travel?

the larger -ve chamber is at the expense of a smaller +ve chamber, so its like you are effectively adding tokens?

The longer the fork travel the less tokens are required in the first place kimbers.
I run zero in both my 170mm Lyriks.
but I value a supportive linear spring rate over small bump compliance in any air fork.

as I explained earlier in the thread there’s very little validity in comparing a 170mm OEM air assembly with a 180mm debonair “upgrade”

I recently debonaired, uptravelled, downtokened and relubed my Yari and can confirm that there has been a % change in overall suspensioniscity of the fork. And that is science.

In fact I’m trying to work out what I want from it and am erring towards a more linear feel.. probably. The air spring change softens up the initial stroke, that much is apparent and I’ve been reducing the tokens one by one from 3 to 1 (its 140 travel) and it doesn’t seem to reach the ramp up quite so rapidly or feel soggy in the mid travel. Anyway good to experiment with this sort of thing provided it doesn’t get in the way of actual riding.

My 10 psi was based on previous setting to obtain 20% sag. Could be inaccurate shock pump but fork feels great now, very happy, and especially for 30odd quid.

as I explained earlier in the thread there’s very little validity in comparing a 170mm OEM air assembly with a 180mm debonair “upgrade”

I see where you’re coming from, but I wouldn’t say there’s little validity in it. There’s just more than one variable that’s changed so it’s hard/impossible to pinpoint changes in suspension performance to either one of those variables. It’s still of interest though as many others will be doing the same or similar ‘upgrade’.

I’ve just bought a 160mm Debonair air spring to replace the 150mm Solo Air in my Pikes. I’m hoping/expecting that I’ll be able to achieve the increased mid stroke support that I want while also improving small bump sensitivity. I suspect that I will need to run a slightly higher percentage sag than currently (in addition to removing the 2 tokens currently installed) in order to achieve this and still use all the travel, but that the increase in travel will offset the change in ride height.

Look, 10mm more travel will make very little difference – I changed some old Marzocchis by 20mm years ago and the results were barely noticeable. It’s pretty obvious that the new Debonair spring makes the fork more supple, especially over multiple bumps.

I know that some of you on here won’t believe this until I’ve conducted empirical tests and published them in a peer-reviewed academic journal, but for the more normal people on here I can confirm that the upgrade is worth it.

JP

I’m no expert but my 2018 Revelation was frankly not fit for task as the comp damping simply could not keep up with fast repeated hits. It just seemed to lock up. I’ve fitted the Debonair and Charge and it’s a massive improvement (I think it’s basically a Pike now). I do wonder if RS realised they’d released a dud and got working on ‘upgrades’ to sort it out. Another plus is the sealed nature of the Charge which makes the whole fork very easy to work on.

The thing is that 10mm does make a difference in this case as it changes the shape of the shock curve. More travel = more progressive. It’s great that you’re happy with your upgrade, but for anyone thinking of changing to Debonair and/or increasing travel it’s good to try and understand how each variable is likely to change the shock curve, ride height, etc. and determine whether or not this fits with what you want to achieve. It’s also useful to discuss how settings such as sag, rebound/compression settings, pressure, and number of tokens are required to change after the upgrade in order to get the performance you want. No need to see your arse!

It made very little difference to head angle and BB height once sag is taken into account. I’d challenge anyone to be able to tell the difference.

I don’t run any tokens as the Yari is very progressive towards the end of its travel in 170mm guise and I’m not massively heavy. I’m not sure if it feels any more progressive now.

The Rockshox app gives me the same psi for my weight on the 170 and 180mm fork, which is why I ran it at the same pressure initially. It seems, however, that you need to run about 5 – 10 psi less.

JP

I just had one fitted to my Pikes, because my old air spring was worn. I’ll report back after this weekend if I remember.

I’m not sure if…

pretty much sums up the thread.

Ha, yes.  I had thought the debonair spring may make my solo air pikes a little more like the coil conversion I put in some DPAs but now I’m not sure if….

Definitely not a more linear spring! I’ve had this year’s 150mm Pike for a few weeks now and I’m finding it very progressive at the end of the stroke. With just under 30% sag and no tokens I was left with over an inch of travel after a day at BPW on Monday. This might work for you but I wish it was a bit more linear, I’m used to forks sitting higher in their travel and not ramping up so much, this seems a bit wallowy so far. (I’d given up on the trying some LSC to keep it up a bit but I’ve since discovered the first ten clicks appear to do nothing). On the plus side, there’s very little initial resistance, I can push it down with my finger.

I’m not sure if…

pretty much sums up the thread.

Thank you for your valuable contribution to the topic.

There’s always one like this on every forum.

JP

for every 10 who blindly sing the praises of their new new shiny shiny?

I know

😉

It made very little difference to head angle and BB height once sag is taken into account. I’d challenge anyone to be able to tell the difference.

I hadn’t thought about this, 30% sag on a 160 fork is 48mm and 30% sag on a 170mm fork is 51mm, I dont think I would ever notice 3mm difference in the fork height! Time to bump up my Lyriks with a new longer airshaft.

I hadn’t thought about this, 30% sag on a 160 fork is 48mm and 30% sag on a 170mm fork is 51mm, I dont think I would ever notice 3mm difference in the fork height! Time to bump up my Lyriks with a new longer airshaft.

Except it would be 7mm different.

Except it would be 7mm different.

Damn, you’re right, 3mm is the amount it’ll SAG extra leaving 7mm actual increase in travel…doh…

for every 10 who blindly sing the praises of their new new shiny shiny?

I know

No, I was referring to the one member who seems to have difficulty conducting themselves in normal social situations, but, hey, believe what you want about yourself if it makes you happy.

JP