Three new Fox GRIP dampers and a 32SC fork

A whole new swathe of dampers from Fox: GRIP X2, GRIP X and GRIP SL. And a total rejig of the Fox 32SC 100mm fork for XC racer-types.

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By ben_haworth

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Three new Fox GRIP dampers and a 32SC fork

Are we allowed to point out the not quite Kashima gold mismatch going on?  Fair play to Fox for clashing with thier own colour….

Are we allowed to point out the not quite Kashima gold mismatch going on?  Fair play to Fox for clashing with thier own colour….

They’ve been doing that a while, shocks/droppers/forks never match.

I think kashima is basically an anodising process so the final colour is dependent on a ton of factors- the exact composition of the aluminium underneath, getting the chemical processes exactly the same, and also the time each bit is in it. Maybe also a pretreatment too. So it’s not too surprising that different parts come out different. But it’s pretty funny when you see a 40 with different coloured legs…

I’m guessing these are going to be at lesat somewhat backwards compatible like the earlier grips were? It seems to be a damper change in the same chassis so that ought to be rollbackable to some degree, though maybe not as far as my ancient 36s… It all sounds like good stuff, especially getting less crosstalk between circuits is basically how you make a fork easy to tune and comprehensible, it’s something that frinstance the old mission control damper was fantastic at but a lot of newer stuff hasn’t been so good.

Oh yeah, I really like the presenter and presentation, he’s got that “showing the firstborn to your parents” thing going on but also a nice amount of total nerdiness about it. Good stuff

Why are we denied the crucial base valve diameter and valve count for the other two dampers!?

Jordi? Properly loves what he does. Not a presenter. Rides a RocketMAX.

So, the earth shattering advancement in suspension technology is a more free flowing piston with a higher number of shims controlling fluid flow.

A good move, but why couldn’t that have been done decades ago? It’s not a suspension secret that Fox have only just discovered.

Good to see that they’ve finally moved away from slotted bushings as well. Again, an obvious improvement that wouldn’t have exhausted too many designers to figure out.

It’s called power clashing, and they do it because they can.

So, the earth shattering advancement in suspension technology is a more free flowing piston with a higher number of shims controlling fluid flow.

I’ve never ridden a Grip2 damper, but people often seem to be running them all the way open (on compression at least).

Jordi says in the video they want to “tell a better story through the damping”, but it’s unclear whether they’ve shifted the useable range?

How good would it be if you could actually buy see through forks!!

Innovation and investment in R&D slowed over Covid which is precisely why this is the first update for 4 years.

It is more of running change despite the gold lowers (which seem to be a launch limited edition).

The good news is that we do seem be reaching a plateau in mountain bike development. Geometry, frames, forks and groupsets are just about as good as it is possible to get and the rate of advances is slowing. Today’s bikes don’t look or perform massively better than those of 5 years ago, but massively different to 10 years ago.

In previous years it was worth investing in new tech to advance things, but as the happy owner of a few sets of Fox forks, I don’t feel compelled. They already work well, and with decent maintenance will stay that way for a while.

This kind of release is ironically good for the consumer but not so good for the industry. As the pace of change slows, the industry resizes and prices continue to increase, there isn’t enough advantage to swapping parts to warrant the prices.

This sounds like a complaint but actually it is the opposite. I am sure if I was in the market for a new fork I would benefit from the new dampers but in a blindfold test there simply isn’t enough newness here to warrant the significant price tag. In short, thanks Fox for proving how good your ‘old’ 2023 forks are!

I’d mostly agree with that Solarider. The “innovation” nowadays all seems to be in electric gubbins that we can treat as optional.

I’ve just got a new fork with a simple Grip damper and it’s excellent, I’ll have no desire to upgrade it.

Probably helps that it’s a coil fork, but it offers as much grip as any fork I’ve ridden.

Imagine how good Fox forks could get if they rediscovered coil springs, eh? 😉

I’m on a grip 2 damper. The compression has been fully open since I got it

Am I missing something in the original article?  I talks about 23 valves – then a 23 valve stack.  The latter seems just a little more accurate….

Can any of you clarify?

EDIT.  I have my high-speed compression fully open and three clicks of low-speed compression – as it dived a little too much.

Wow, the prices…….

Jordi says in the video they want to “tell a better story through the damping”, but it’s unclear whether they’ve shifted the useable range?

Does that mean more marketing words or making the damping actually work?

Does that mean more marketing words or making the damping actually work?

Well I just picked it out as amusing marketing bollocks.

What don’t you like about Fox damping?

Fox played a blinder moving to the damping tech from Marzocchi after they bought them out… and have built on that rather than compromising it. A different range of damping (so 90% of riders aren’t using ‘em fully open) and more independence between circuits was all that was needed out of this iteration, let’s hope the riding proves they’ve achieved this.

The naming convention is pure marketing though, to try and get people to match fork and shock by name.

Grip X is basically the original, yet still brilliant, Grip damper with an extra adjuster.

Grip X2 is just Grip 2 with (hopefully) improved flow and the same adjusters.

chakaping
Free Member

What don’t you like about Fox damping?

The range of actual useful adjustment in the current crop is really pretty poor ime. Like, if any number of people are running an adjuster fully open (as I am and as the internet suggests many other people are) then that’s a sign that you’ve fundamentally ****ed it. Does anyone in the world run the high speed compression over half?

And the grip damper’s obviously a compromise due to having less adjustment, but I’m too light for it, there was no good setting in the damper for me. And I’m not alone.

How good would it be if you could actually buy see through forks!!

Made from Swarovski crystal!

Grip X is basically the original, yet still brilliant, Grip damper with an extra adjuster.

Grip X2 is just Grip 2 with (hopefully) improved flow and the same adjusters.

but they look different in the pictures! Are you saying that they were always 20-something mm in diameter with 23 shims/valves?

It amazes me that anyone using a long travel fork uses no compression damping, I find my 38 is awful without it but I’ve always like compression damping over volume reduction.
At 73kg got 1 reducer, 113psi(on my pump) hsc 1 from closed lsc 10 from closed. Are we slowly heading back to the early 2010s ctd era where your fork was either at no travel or full travel with these

Fox played a blinder moving to the damping tech from Marzocchi after they bought them out…

So when they moved from Fit4 (or CTD?) to Grip, that was based on the damper that Marz had been using?

That could explain why my Z1 Coil feels like a proper Marz fork of old.

The range of actual useful adjustment in the current crop is really pretty poor

That’s what I suspected (and had mentioned myself), but I thought the comment I was responding too was just unhelpfully negative.

It amazes me that anyone using a long travel fork uses no compression damping

Fully open dials/ports does not mean “no damping”.

Chakaping… the range of adjustment on the basic (and ace) Grip probably pairs better with your coil than with our air sprung forks. Most people end up with leaving them fully open on air forks. I’ve got one of those Marz coil kits to go in a Fox36 rhythm… so I’ll see for myself soon enough.

but they look different in the pictures

I was over simplifying. Greatly. The changes should/could result in no more of the Marz oil sounds that current Grip forks often make. Not that you can ever really hear them when on the trails. Might help sell them to people who bounce on forks and shocks in shops and at demos though.

that was based on the damper that Marz had been using?

Not officially. It just happened to work in the same way… 😉

Chakaping… the range of adjustment on the basic (and ace) Grip probably pairs better with your coil than with our air sprung forks. Most people end up with leaving them fully open on air forks. I’ve got one of those Marz coil kits to go in a Fox36 rhythm… so I’ll see for myself soon enough.

I’ve got about quarter of the compression on, but think I need more to stop it diving on steep sections. I am at the top end of the weight for the medium spring.

I’d been wanting to try one of these for ages now, and it’s even better than I’d hoped. Much more of the coil feel that I was after than my coil Helm.

Would be interesting to see what could be achieved with the GripX2 and a coil.

I assume the new dampers are backwards compatible, as I think they showed pricing for them?

Personally I quite like the simplicity of just having LSC and rebound knobs, like on my Select+ Pike.

I run a bit of compression on my Z2’s (which IIRC are a derivative of the basic Grip, same piston different IFP?). I agree with markspark, compression damping works better than an overly progressive spring as it’s absorbing the energy which means you don’t need so much rebound to stop it throwing you off.

markspark
Free Member

It amazes me that anyone using a long travel fork uses no compression damping

That’s the exact problem though, “high speed adjuster rolled all the way off” is not “no HSC damping”, in these forks it’s “still really quite a lot of HSC damping, too much for a lot of people”. It’s minimum, it’s not off.

It’s not quite this simple, but, basically they created a really excellent damper- or in fact dampers, it’s the same of the Grip, Grip2 and even my ancient Fit4 at least- but then put the adjustment range in the wrong place and gimped it.

(the reason it’s not quite that simple is that the damping range isn’t necessarily a fully independent thing, so it’s possible that the damping range is a bit dictated by other parts of the fork design, or there can be strong overlaps between circuits that basically mean you can’t create specific effects without crosstalk or other drawbacks. Which isn’t an excuse, it’s just a description of a damper design with issues. In other cases, like those old Fit4s I mentioned, it was literally just a design failure, Andreani made a replacement piston that fixed their mistake without other drawbacks. But by and large, the cleverer the fork, the harder it is to change one thing without unintended consequences)

It’s actually pretty common, this sort of thing, to be fair to Fox. Probably every manufacturer has had forks that has either not powerful enough adjustment, or the range in the wrong place, or where there’s a single adjuster the curves don’t match up well at different spring rates so the compromises are all bad.

Bottom line is, selling a £1000+ fork or designing an OE part that won’t work correctly for a whole lot of users without spending money on it is a bit shit, no matter how excellent it is for other people. Especially when you don’t advertise it

Anyone else mentioned the rear facing arch?

GripX is also used in a new Marz 38 stanchioned fork, with the simpler damper working with a wider travel range than when used in Fox forks. Interesting. No coil option, but sounds like a more conventional air spring than the Fox38 that could lend itself to a coil version in future…

🤞🏼

“The good news is that we do seem be reaching a plateau in mountain bike development. Geometry, frames, forks and groupsets are just about as good as it is possible to get and the rate of advances is slowing...”

ARRRRRGGGGHHHHH. That means they’ll revert to introducing even more PITA non-interchageable interfaces, to sell more shit.

1- 9/16ths steerer tube diameters for a 7.4% improvement in an irrelevant or imaginary stiffness parameter, anyone?