2021 RockShox Lyrik with the all new Debonair air spring explained

At the bottom, just take that up and drop it on the floor

Hey everyone, Andy from Singletrap Magazine, and I'm outside in my outdoor office once again

and this time I'm with the 2021 RockShox Lyric Fork. Now, if you're looking at this fork and

thinking, hey Andy, what's the difference between this and the previous Ultimate? I'll be honest

there isn't a lot. The chassis is the same, the same 35mm stanchions are being used

And even the graphics kit is the same. RockShox last year updated the Lyric to Charger Damper 2.1, SKF seals, and a new Maxima oil

And they're all the same on this fork too. But what has changed is the Debonair air spring assembly

Now you might think, well, that's not much of an upgrade. Well, it is actually. Performance-wise, the upgrade is really, really good

and the upside of this very small upgrade is the fact that if you've got the previous 2020

ultimate or even a 2019 Lyric you can put this on your fork so what RockShox had found

well what some riders had found was when they're trying to set the fork up the Lyric up with the

debonair spring sometimes it was quite difficult to get the stated travel and the actual travel to line up and what you need to do is you need to equalize the negative and positive air chambers in the fork and what that means is you let the air out you cycle them

a few times you pump them up to 50 psi you cycle them a few times and so on until you get it to the

air pressure desired for your weight and for the sag as well the new system means that the air

spring actually equalizes itself automatically so all you need to do is whack them out the box

chop the stereo to the right height, pump them up to the right pressure, check the sag and off you go

That's it. Because everything else has stayed the same on this fork, all the settings are the same

Rebound, Charger Damper 2.1 are all the same from the previous 2020 Lyric

so no changes needed there either. Simple set and forget Lyric stuff

So if we'll have a look at the new Debonair, this is the original Debonair air spring

and this is the air spring that you'll find in a 2019 RockShox Lyric

and the 2020 Ultimate. And as you see, we've got a small air piston here and we've got a short

footnut at the bottom. Now, what RockShox found was because of this equalization issue

they found that if they extend the footnut and increase the size of the air piston so that a

whole air assembly sits higher up inside the fork it meant that the fork could equalize itself But not only that it meant that the ride height of the fork can be a little bit higher too while retaining that small bump compliance

You've got this footnut at the bottom just take that up and drop it on the floor and you slide off

the original air piston and you put this much larger air piston on that just slides in

and then you put this longer footnut on and that's it and then you whack it all back inside

your Lyric and what this does is this actually lifts the whole air spring 10 millimeters higher

into the fork inside the stanchion of the Lyric there's a small dimple in there now the air spring

sits inside the dimple and that allows the airflow to equalize equally setting up is much much faster

than before, more accurate. And also it means on the trail, the fork is sitting higher in its travel

and actually you can really feel it. Sprinting into fast terrain, hitting downhills and even

climbing, you can feel the Lyric is sitting much, much higher. But at the same time, it's still super

supple and progressive and it's eating up all those little bumps and lumps in the terrain

In corners, the grip is insane because the fork is not diving down as much as it was

It sitting higher you can charge into corners and allow the front wheel to track the ground and find even more grip than before So although the Lyric Ultimate was already a really really good fork this small upgrade has really improved it

In fact, in the RockShox bump that they've sent out, they've not mentioned it's a 2021 fork

They just call it the updated Lyric Ultimate because it is. It's just a small update, but a very worthwhile one

if you haven't already serviced your forks if your forks were waiting for a service now

i would say take them apart clean them up and while you're in there swap over to this new air

spring assembly because it really does work and as you can see in these riding shots the suspension

action is amazing i was really impressed in corners in the steep stuff and i was just it's

very very good it's just like i say it's made a great fork even better and it's such a small update

now if you wanted to buy this fork on its own with the new air debonair spring in there already

it's a 929 pounds i'll have information on the pricing of this and i'll pop that here

but i can't imagine it'll be too much and fitting it'll be pretty easy so yeah if you head over to

single track world now you can find a full in-depth detail of the new debonair air spring

and the 2021 lyric and also you'll find my first ride review of the fork too if you have any

questions please let me know in the comments below and yeah see you all soon bye bye