Hi

Hope you are all well and keeping safe!
I have brought a pair of 2018 Revelation forks (SH) with moco damper.
I have replaced seals/ lower service, put new oil in damper upper and replaced air shaft for debonair.
Within 10 minutes of mellow singletrack my forearms were numb!!
Apart from swapping the moco out for a charger is there anything else I can try first? Different Oil weight in damper upper tube?
Any advice would be much appreciated!!
Cheers

Small, high frequency bumps are the moco damper’s kryptonite I’m afraid.

It is a really basic damper, get a charger damper in there.

Cheers for reply.
Yes seems to be the case, takes bigger hits ok but smaller frequent hits it’s terrible.
Anyone selling s charger 2 for a 29er ?
Anyone had any success using different weight oil?

I believe the 2.1 is the better option in the RC2 rather than RCT3 option.

I’m surprised no one has done a round-up and review of Revelation/lyric damper upgrades. There’s a few different companies offering options.

Y9u could certainly try lighter oil – that will reduce the damping all round some of which you can then get back with adjustments that you have for some aspects of damping. would it suit you? I have no idea but I have always mucked about with oil viscosity and levels. A hang over from my motorbike days

Are you able to add / remove spacers on the air side for MY 2018? If so – what’s in there now? Have you added or removed any?

Thanks for the replies!!
Got one token in there at the moment I think? Might it help to take it out?
I might try putting some 2.5wt oil in there and see if that makes any difference?
Failing that ( which I’m almost convinced it will still be pop )
I will take the plunge abc look at a charger 2.1.

Is this the B1 35mm stanchioned revelation? We have seen almost all of these that pass through our shop suffering with very, very tight bushes. Nothing you can do at home will fix this I’m afraid, you need somewhere that can size the bushes.

Interesting, yes they are 35mm, think they must be early ones though as got a T7 in the serial no. Not sure if that make them a B1?

Is this the B1 35mm stanchioned revelation? We have seen almost all of these that pass through our shop suffering with very, very tight bushes.

Is this what gives the loose headset feeling?

I have the moco damper in a Yari and lighter oil made a big difference for me. I used a 2.5wt oil in there.

+1 on getting your bushes checked. Sprung Suspension my local tuners did this for me and it transformed my Pike (same chassis). Once we are out of lock down one way to tell if you have a tight bushing problem is go find a nice section of unfriendly roots, ride it repeatedly and bracket your rebound adjustment. The high frequency of the bumps will give your fork a work out. If you feel that the rebound adjustment is hardly making any difference 3 or 4 clicks either way, then the friction in the fork is overwhelming the damper. I got my fork back and had to immediately wind 4 or 5 more clicks of damping in!

I’ve been looking into this too. I had a set of 2019 OE Revs on a new hardtail I bought last year and whilst they’re ok they aren’t great.

This is compounded by my full sus having Yaris with a Charger 2.0 upgrade and Smashpot coil which makes them an awesome fork.

I’ve been in touch with TF Tuned and of the damper options available they recommended a FAST damper rather than either of the RockShox options. The FAST is just a damper which relies on the RockShox rebound shaft so it’s an easy swap with no need to disassemble the fork. It’s what I’ll be going for shortly.

Cheers for all the info and advice, much appreciated! For the sake of £7 I will try some 2.5wt in there – then go down the damper upgrade route if I still can’t feel my forearms!!

Very interesting thread, never new it was possible to upgrade forks like this.

I’ve recently bought a 2017 model Stumpjumper and whilst it’s a great bike the forks are terrible over washboard type bumps, I was quite surprised, the 2011 Rebas on my previous bike were considerably better.

The forks are oe fitment Revelation RL boost 150mm travel, I had a look on trailhead and they come up as FS-RVL-RL-A5 but the only tuning upgrades were for remote lever motion control, so not really an upgrade at all.

Am I out of luck or is it possible to replace my solo air spring with a DebonAir setup?

I believe you can only get a debonair upgrade for 2018+ revs, once they’d changed to 35mm upper tubes. Have you tried playing with the number of tokens to see if you can improve it that way?

I believe you can only get a debonair upgrade for 2018+ revs, once they’d changed to 35mm upper tubes. Have you tried playing with the number of tokens to see if you can improve it that way?

Ah that explains a lot, yes my stanchions are 32mm, trust me to be the wrong side of a spec change 😀

I’ll order some lighter weight oil for the forks and have a look what tokens are installed when it arrives. What should I be looking for if I get no joy and decide to upgrade? A set with debonair and a charger damper or is there better available if starting from scratch?

If selling and buying new ones you may as well get a Pike. Same chassis as the 35mm Revs but it already comes with a charger damper in it – and I think so say slippier’ seals. If new enough you should get the 2019 debonair air shaft as well – that’s the age of fork they changed to the aluminium seal head and using the inside of the airshaft to add to the size of the negative airspring.

@joebristol Cheers, I’ll open the forks up and see what can be done with tokens and lighter oil. After that I’ll be on the lookout for a set of pikes.

Changing the damping oil from 5w to 2.5w will make no noticeable difference. You would need to change the parameters of the components that the oil travels through. (This was said to me by TF Tuned a while back).
For you to get numb forearms after 10mins would suggest that something is clearly at fault with the fork rather than a an adjustment needed.
I would suggest taking the lowers off and checking that the rebound rod can be easily moved up and down into the stanchion with ease. Its very likely that bottom of the motion control is not opening and closing properly which would make your fork feel very harsh. If you cant push the rebound rod up easily and smoothly then this is the likely culprit of your fork feeling harsh. There were lots of broken/failed motion control on the early 35mm Revs (i worked in a shop and we had to send many back for warranty).

Update for anyone interested!
I tried changing the oil to 2.5w took out the volume spacer, lubed bushings and still no improvement.
I then totally stripped the fork so I could slide uppers in lowers and found significant friction between the two, had to give crown a proper yank to extend ( Rick draper, add another one to the list!! You were right)
Off they went to Jtech for bushing resize. Feel plusher round the garden so fingers crossed for some improvement!
Off for a ride in a bit so will report back.
Cheers

Result. Shame that RockShox seems to be letting forks out of the factory like this though.

What is actually done to resize the bushings?

Think the use a metal dowel thingy a fraction bigger than the stanchion to rub down the inner of the bushing?
Happy to report the difference is night and day!! I know the moco is pretty basic and limited, but from what it was!
Enjoyed riding my HT for the first time since I built it.
Lad who I brought them off only used them a couple of times before he ditched them, makes you wonder how many have done the same due to poor QC.
Have to give Jtech a ur out, forks booked in for Tuesday morning ( picked up free of charge ) arrived back on Wednesday afternoon!!
Cheers for all the info and advice peeps!!