Let's offroad / mountain bike / mtb / ride dirt

Dunno. I've never ridden a new RockShox fork I liked. Overdesigned dampers that give good car park feel but at speed they don't perform, ATMO.

My advice is: do what Tom says.
And keep an eye out for a mattoc pro NIB/taken off bike etc. That’s how I got mine on eBay.

But I guess eBay would side with me most likely...

IF you found out it was a dud in time.

A lot of issues with suspension are difficult to perceive, even the owners hardly know what working well actually looks like.

Any of the big guys forks new with warranty is good enough for you if you don't really know what you are doing; any deficiency in the design of the fork will be hidden by sub optimal set up anyway. When you know more about what they are and how they work and how you ride then you can be choosy.

There's also a really common problem with Rockshox forks in that they overly grease them and then the ports get blocked and then they need to be serviced because they sucked down and then maybe limited to 50% of the travel if you get it un sucked. I've got a Revelation and this happened to it, and then I had it serviced under warranty (and ended up with new lowers oddly), when it came back it seemed to functioned a lot better than it did when it was new, so @Howard has a good point about finding it was a dud in time.

I've also hired a bike with one of the Fox forks that @TvH is talking about and I'd say it was better than the Revelation.

Howard does speak truth, and my issues with RockShox forks are firmly planted in the interaction between my weight and riding preferences and issues getting enough low speed compression damping and mid-stroke support from the spring without them becoming very harsh in fast rough terrain. I believe off-the-top smoothness is significantly less important, and RockShox have always marketed themselves through that metric. Also I hate buzzwords.

I'm sure the new Yari will be very competent for most riding. The DebonAir (spit) spring is supposed to be a fairly big improvement over the older version. It also benefits from being basically a damper and seal swap away from a Lyrik RC2.

@BareNecessities

Did you see this?

12 degrees off that mythical seat tube angle?

12 degrees off amazing climbing for one ride and a lifetime of fucked knees.

Building it yourself is definitely the way to go :'D

I think, given I haven't ridden enough nice bikes to have any preferences about damping etc., and that very expensive maintenance is a distinct possibility, I'll just wing it with that fork and hope for the best. Suspension (and brake bleeding) is like the last bit of bike tinkering that I haven't got stuck into, guess now's the time.

I wonder whether the right to return stuff to Germany will exist after Brexit though

If / when you do start tinkering, one bit of advice: safety goggles.

Great fun at gorrick. Got my arse kicked, some seriously fast people.

https://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/ridgeway/news/your-ideas-cycling-and-horse-riding-along-ridgeway

https://cyclingindustry.news/19-million-to-go-to-scottish-innovation-centre-and-mountain-biking-mecca/

Cheap zees (~£120 set)

https://www.chainreactioncycles.com/mobile/shimano-zee-m640-disc-brake/rp-prod82434

Fork arrived. It looks like it's possibly been test-fitted or at least opened in the past. I'm not too precious about this sort of thing so that doesn't bother me aside from:

• it makes oil noises when I turn it upside down and
  
• there's oil on the compression adjuster.
  
  

Normal behaviour?

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Gary has been out of action most of the year, broke the crap dropper and riding without one is a well known impossibility. Managed to fix it by picking up a cheap new frame the other month and cheap new drivechain, hub, tyres and dropper to suit the other week, will now look much better not being ridden in the dining room.

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it makes oil noises when I turn it upside down and

Oil slooshing noises are generally good, as it mean they bothered to put some oil in at the factory

Whether or not they put the right amount in is a different matter

there's oil on the compression adjuster.

Most likely just some spillage. Give the fork a clean around that area, and see if any more appears

Oil slooshing noises are generally good, as it mean they bothered to put some oil in at the factory

It’s the motion control damper that mixes oil with air. It’s gonna sloosh.

Charger not so much.

Thanks both. I've been looking at the service manual and exploded diagrams so hopefully I can become self-sufficient/less of a pest.

Going to fit it to my old bike for a ride tomorrow as the A2C with 130mm/650b×2.85" (really more like a 2.5") is pretty much bang on the old 120mm/29×2.3".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk7rliZpuSs

Obviously he's hucking every set of steps he can find but the curbs-as-berms are pretty amazing.

That huck to flat near the start! Ankles of steel! And 6:49! Ooof!

https://youtu.be/WF6L4KrHnJ4

Merde

"don't laugh"