Being tested here:
http://m.vitalmtb.com/videos/features/Pre-season-Testing-Ohlins-Suspension-on-an-Enduro-29-with-Curtis-Keene,33089/sspomer,2

I’ll be forced to buy a 29er if they release this in 29 only again….

*swoon*

Bring back coils! If Ohlins are doing it, it’s because everyone else is **** wrong! 😈 For those people, like in the comments section in that article, that say they don’t buy air forks for the weight but because they’re easier to tune. How **** hard is it to buy a new coil spring, pop the top cap off….drop it in….and send it back under the distance selling act if it isn’t right.

Lazy arseholes. You waste more time checking your pressures everytime you ride – everyone I know spends about 10 minutes before a ride dicking about with air pressures whilst I’m bouncing away on my bike waiting. Let’s say 30 hours a ride a year, that’s 300 sodding minutes wasted on checking air pressures. 5 hours! It doesn’t take 5 hours to order a coil online and install it.

Everyone is wrong, thanks Ohlins – for confirming my angry opinions. 😆

Well that’s the final nail in the coffin for my wallet…I’m going to have myself a custom geo Ancilotti Scarb Evo 29er, full Ohlins coil front and rear…..so I can knowingly sneer at all the air sprung plastic bikes and the people continually **** with air pressures ……also…I’m probably going to get divorced now.

Tom has it right, still to this day the best fork I’ve ridden was a coil spring Sektor.

Since then I’ve had an air Revelation, air Pike and an air X-Fusion Sweep….and while they’ve all been ‘good’ they’ve been some way off the plushness and lacking the bottomless feel of the coil sprung Sektor.

The first boutique suspension company that uses some hipster “steel is real” marketing for suspension, will get a tasty little market for those of us who can’t stand air. There’s a growing market, people are remembering the positives after initially being blown away by the sensitivity of highly sagged super progressive air setups….the clamour for things like the luftkappe is evidence of this…it’s more coil like but it’s still not there and never will be…and air will always lack the reliability/durability of coil.

A guy on my pike coil conversion thread had a leaking pike due to stanchion scratches, would cost 250 to fix, sorted for 120 by installing a coil….the issue would have never arose with a coil in the first place.

Balls to everyone and the bike industry, they’ll pry coil forks out of my cold dead hands.

They are movimg to coil because they can’t make their air stuff work properly…

I know how to get air to work as well as it can. The fact is, air forks will never have the same midstroke support unless you use an air system found on forks like the Showa SFF – and those suffer considerable stiction on bicycles because of the lighter forces acting on the the suspension – hence some of the negative press about the Ohlins and Manitou IRT air systems. They will never have the same level of reliability and they bind and go stiff under fork flex.

In short, they’re a poor substitute for a coil and a hydraulic bottom out adjuster – but hey, they’re less faff right….despite all the checking of air pressures before a ride, leaking seals, grease blocking equalisation ports, stick down, worrying about scratching the stanchion inners whilst doing a lower service. etc etc etc.

There’s some top class ranting here.

Who on earth checks their air pressures every ride? I’m lucky if I check mine once a month & because air loss is on such a small scale it’s a couple of pumps, & it’s good to go.

Who on earth checks their air pressures every ride?

Usually the kiddies, who think it looks Pro and that you have to adjust them according to the trail, weather, phase of the moon.

I check mine every ride. I’ve had a few rides where the bike didn’t feel quite right and lo & behold the shock pressure was a bit low (BOS- so runs at >220psi).

I agree with most of the above – the whole industry wants air because one shock/fork fits all customers but then they’re spending £££ on R&D and marketing (I suspect mostly marketing!) on ways to get the air shock/forks to feel like coil. Would be cheaper to incorporate 3 x steel springs covering most of the ‘normal’ range with every new bike and then the rider can choose between them. As others have said – it ain’t hard to switch a shock coil spring. Fork is admittedly trickier but hardly rocket science.

My Xfusion Roughcut fork is better damped and stiffer than my old Fox 32 vanillas but I prefer the coil feel.

Fork is admittedly trickier but hardly rocket science.

Removing the top cap and lifting a spring out has to be on a par with swapping a shock spring

The crooked bike industry is shafting us with its air sprung hype – fake news! TERRIBLE!

Removing the top cap and lifting a spring out has to be on a par with swapping a shock spring

Chews up top cap, dribbles oil on the carpet, tops up with wrong oil etc. Then fiddle with the adjustment cause the spring isnt quite right etc.

it’s because everyone else is **** wrong!

No shades of grey in your world are there Tom? 😆

No shades of grey in your world are there Tom?

To be fair, it’s widely accepted that the current generation air-sprung Rockshox Pike is one of the worst forks ever. It can be made to work acceptably, but only by swapping out the entire damper mechanism and changing the air-spring for a custom-made coil.

It’s only the crooked bike media that has convinced us otherwise with their so-called ‘reviews’. Take it back to a really basic level and you’ll see that air is effectively nothing. Try compressing some air with your finger tips then try the same thing with a steel coil spring – pretty obvious why air is next to useless no?

The only reason the crooked bike industry uses air-spring suspension is that air is cheap and abundant. You rarely, however, see a spring in the wild unless it’s inside a springer spaniel. Go figure.

😆

To be fair, it’s widely accepted that the current generation air-sprung Rockshox Pike is one of the worst forks ever.

I know, I have one myself. That fact that I’m not bucked continuously from my high horse, is of course entirely down to my awsomz riding skillz innit.

😆

Hahah BWD, that was genuinely an amusing response.

😆

Everyone knows coil is way better for riders with small hands too.

What the hell are you babbling on about? The Pike fork when it came out was better than anything. It’s not the best now but the industry has moved on but to say it’s a bad fork is nonsense.

The only forks we need are pitchforks!

Pitchpro2011, check your irony meter, it may need some recalibrating 😉

My old Lyrik forks with a coil spring were brilliant. But equally I had some Marzocchi Z4’s which had a great air spring, and later MX-pro’s. Not the lightest forks (but not ridiculous either) but simple open bath internals that just worked ride after ride after ride with no stiction.

What the hell are you babbling on about? The Pike fork when it came out was better than anything. It’s not the best now but the industry has moved on but to say it’s a bad fork is nonsense.

Fake news! Very unfair! My friends at RS are great people, but not infallibubble! SAD.

Make coil great again!!! Take back control..

i want…
Dual position coil forks with a damper as good as the charger/roughcut ones apparently are and 24/25mm stanchions.
or at least with dual flow rebound damper. i’ve almost got there with converting Sektors to DPC and sticking in an upgraded rebound damper from revelations. shortened my travel a bit too much because of top-out bumper but made forks AMAZING.

2 questions:
1.does the charger bit cover compression AND rebound dampers? only one of the 2? is it all one unit? what?

b. what does ‘open bath’ refer too? just the spring side? ie nothing seperating inside of uppers from lowers?

what does ‘open bath’ refer too? just the spring side? ie nothing seperating inside of uppers from lowers?

Open bath forks had no seal at the bottom of the stanchion, so you filled with oil from the top and it filled the lower legs. Meant you had ~100ml of extra oil in there (which weighs something). But the extra oil made them ridiculously plush, meant there were fewer seals causing friction, fewer seals to fail (they usually just had 2 pistons, one on a rod from the top of the fork for compression, and one fro the bottom for rebound, so the only seal needed to be the ring around the pistons. They dealt with overheating simply by having more oil to absorb the heat.

They’ve not been common for a long time though because people chase headline weights rather than 3 year service intervals and bushings that could be replaced by hand.

jamiesilo – Member

i want…
Dual position coil forks with a damper as good as the charger/roughcut ones apparently are and 24/25mm stanchions.

I guess you meant 34/35? In which case, may I present to you, the 2010-onwards U-turn Lyrik. You can stick Boxxer lowers on it to make it 650b apparently. Unlimited length adjustment from 115-160mm (and you can increase that to 125-170mm with a spacer), best damper Rockshox have ever made… Weighs a metric ****ton but that’s because excellence is heavy.

(* oh yes it is, #chargertards. SAD!)

meant there were fewer seals causing friction, fewer seals to fail (they usually just had 2 pistons, one on a rod from the top of the fork for compression

Remember that you usually had an extra set of oil seals (below the dust wipers) to handle the pressure though. If they went things tended to get messy!

i know i know northwind!. yes did mean 34/35 too.
but i did also mean 2 position not u-turn, because yes 6 turns on the trail-side is not ideal for my riding

and i should’ve added, doesn’t weigh a ton. heavier is obviously to be expected, but i reckon they could get things lighter, given a new pike weighs about the same as a solo air sektor, despite being much beefier.

but otherwise yep, lyrics as you describe are great i’m sure.

Remember that you usually had an extra set of oil seals (below the dust wipers) to handle the pressure though. If they went things tended to get messy!

Yea, but forks still have an oil seal. And it still has to resist pressure because the lowers are sealed so as the forks compress the oil/air is still trying to force it’s way out. And because everything was constantly soaked in oil, it ‘got messy’ a whole lot less often!

I think part of the reason they worked so well though (even air sprung versions) was that the air in the lowers effectively acted as a small un-damped spring, the fork could move with the oil before the oil had to flow through the damper, so the fork reacted much better over small bumps.

Does this mean I need to bow to eldest_oab pleading that the Marzocchi AM1 should go onto the front of his ‘new’ Five, to replace the Revelation?

Marzocchi AM 1 were/are good forks, IMO but then I like Marzocchis.

This was the greatest fork of all time.

Everything else is just an imitation.

Looks unreal. It arrived at my local shop today (the complete bike). A Specialized enduro 29 with Ohlins coil front and rear. Plus it’s black with gold detail. This has now become my ‘perfect’ bike.
They seemed to think the fork is not available aftermarket.

Never been able to get full travel with a coil fork, nearest we have ever had was with a Lyrik and a extra soft spring that TF breathed on.
Probably down to the fact that I only weigh 9 stone wet through, and I’m the heaviest between me and the girls.

Air forks and shocks have been a god send to us lightweights.

The Ohlins air forks and shocks are probably the best we have ridden and from a girlie point of view they do look nice

New one, cant link to press release £5400

https://www.specialized.com/gb/gb/men/bikes/mountain/trail/enduro-pro-carbon-296fattie/129653

sharkattack – Member
This was the greatest fork of all time.

I was that fork (and DH forks) every time I’m having to undo a stem as part of a lowers service. The dual-calliper mount version was the real winner though!

Looks unreal. It arrived at my local shop today (the complete bike)

Not Bike Scene in Guisborough is it? Just seen it on their Facebook page.

It doesn’t have the coil fork.

Looking forward to next years off the peg Specailized’s though. Coil sprung Ohlins and threaded BB’s everywhere.

Specialized site says coil front and rear.

In short, they’re a poor substitute for a coil and a hydraulic bottom out adjuster – but hey, they’re less faff right

I had 66 RC2Xs with the extra stiff damping on the bottom out. They were absolutely magically supple. So much so that they’d ripple gently up and down on tarmac as I rode. Which was a bit annoying really, but they were still marvellous, but incredibly heavy.

They were replaced (as the bike was nicked) with an air equivalent, 66 SL ATAs. They are problematic, to say the least, but a kg or more lighter.

Pearce cycles in Ludlow. They’ve put up photos on their facebook now. They have the air version too but this is a limited edition with coil front and rear.

Dilwyn in Herefordshire?

Its the Enduro Ohlins coil. Looks to be the same spec as the Elite but with Ohlins coil front and rear