I think I’m just going to have to pick one to buy and play around with it. I can’t use my current one because it’s the dropper above the bar, plus the two suspension lock/unlock levers below the bar all as part of the same assembly. So far the dropper-only squidlock looks to be the lowest profile and narrowest, and maybe I can move one of them inboard of the brake lever too.
I think the fact that the AXS Pod mounts above / below and right / left does give me some things to play around with though.
I run the woldtooth resolve with the fox lever as I had it from my previous transfer dropper and it works well. I did try the 360 lever but it was fiddly to connect and did break one time so I lost confidence in it.
I saw them as well but curious what the spec is to get them light enough for those guys considering the weights listed on Trek’s site for the Top Fuel.
Frame weight is only 600 grams heavier than supercaliber. Black frames may save a a couple hundred grams as well…heavier fork, but maybe they can get away with no inserts… while it may not be ideal, on a course like that seems like it may just come out in the wash.
I pulled my lowers off to install the damper, but I was due for a 50 hour service anyway. I’m pretty sure you could swap the damper without removing the lowers and messing with oil, you’d just need to be careful with the angle when you remove the damper bolt at the bottom to keep the oil from coming out. I actually got a bad damper that is a little squishy in lock mode, so I’m getting a replacement from SRAM and may try the swap it without removing lowers this time. I suspect the damper just wasn’t fully bled at the factory, but since it’s new I didn’t want to mess with it and I’m just going to swap in a replacement.
If you are rolling with the default configuration settings, the system is analyzing your ride and guesstimating power zones for you in the background. If you’ve done a ride, you should be able to go into the app and see them once you sync to the bike. I’ve got 20+ hours on mine and I’m pretty impressed with how well it set the zones. You can manually override the zone settings in the app and I’m thinking about reducing the top end of my “low” zone to make the system firm up the suspension at a little bit lower power. A cool feature is that you can see your current power zone on the fork LED’s while riding and also see how the suspension is reacting in each power zone for a given situation (climbing/flat/bumpy/etc.). By watching, you can start to understand what’s going on the the background (ie - putting out medium power, climbing, rolling over some bumps - the suspension would probably be open for the fork, pedal for the shock). Here’s the screen that shows the automatically assigned power zones -
And I bit the bullet and got one of these chargers. I have a bunch of single battery axs chargers, but the power cords get to be a bit much. The 4 port charger also uses USB-C instead of the mini usb on the singles.
Once you have linked all your components and you can see them in the app, you should be able to go to that bike and choose the “flight attendant” option and then drill into “auto detect” to the right of “Adaptive ride dynamics”. That will bring up the screen showing the power zones that FA has assigned. I don’t know how much ride time it takes to get the initial values, but I think the documentation says it’s only 20 minutes or so. My first ride was a couple hours and then they eventually populated in the app and the “power zone” lights on my fork started working. But it didn’t happen from just riding, I had to bring the app up after riding and drill into the bike. If the power values are still blank in the app after riding, the bike needs some time to sync with the app (which it doesn’t tell you it’s doing, so be patient). I think it took mine 5+ minutes with the app open to eventually see those values and have the power led’s start working on the bike. But I was impatient opening and closing the app constantly wondering how to make it work. Until it just worked…
I feel like this is the never-ending RockShox lockout question that doesn’t seem to have an actual answer…
Assuming it pushes down to there and then has a firm platform, I don’t think that’s too much travel. In my opinion, you don’t want your “fully locked” position to be with the fork fully topped out. I think RS did themselves a disservice by advertising a “rock solid” lockout and then have found that people take that to assume there is literally zero movement. That said, if you can continue to compress beyond that and it’s just a slower moving fork, then you may have an issue with the damper.
Agree with this. A little movement under load to get to the proper sag height it fine, you just want a firm pedaling flatform with no bob. My original damper worked this way (after screwing with the remote a bit). The FA replacement damper actually worked the same when initially installed, but would totally soften up some times and work almost like pedal mode(freely bobbing when pedaling hard out of the saddle). I thought it might be the FA controller not turning the damper key all the way to the locked position, but I remove the controller and turned the key manually (all the way) and it did the same thing. Almost certainly a bleed issue since it comes and goes a bit. In my discussions with SRAM, they did not think it was the damper seal blowing out (a known problem on earlier model dampers)
I’ve had three of these dampers on 2 forks. My sense is that the damper is very sensitive to cable pull on the remote lockout and when you push very hard you will move all of them. In the real world I find that it makes very little difference.
@grwoolf that’s exactly what I would like to do. Buy expert, swap cranks for XX with PM and suspension with FA. That should be like having S-Works, only like 400g heavier but 5k cheaper.
My question is though. Do you think that FA made you any faster? Rockshox claim that is could be up to 2% which is huge. That’s like 3 minutes saved over a typical XCM course.
I think 2% is highly optimistic marketing. I certainly wouldn’t count on that. I’d echo a lot of what @Junk_Miles posted. Just being able to focus on pedaling and driving the bike is the biggest advantage. On any course where the terrain is changing frequently, FA will put the suspension in the right setting better/faster than I can manually. How much time that translates to would be a total guess. After years of using manual 3 way lockouts on my XC bikes, having the dampening automated is worth the price of admission (for me) even if it doesn’t make me significantly faster. It just makes the bike more fun to ride.
Absolutely. Without FA, there are situations where I’m quickly trying to shift, raise/lower dropper, and change suspension all at the same time (while I might also be navigating a technical spot on course). I may still screw that situation up even with FA, but FA increases my odds of success. I really believe that FA is probably more beneficial to a less skilled rider compared to someone who is already really dialed in. Lucky for me, I’m that less skilled rider… Maybe a bit of a crutch, but a crutch I’m happy to use.
Have you ridden the current SID/SIDLUX? I came from many years on fox 32 and 34sc forks and fox shocks and I was pretty blown away with how plush and progressive the new Rockshox stuff is. To be fair, I was going to a modern longer travel bike at the same time, but I really, really like the feel of the suspension even without the FA stuff controlling it.
I’ve broken a nextie rim before. years ago, on the 25mm internal ultralight 29". I was definitely “out of scope” for the intended purpose when I broke it. (jumping features at a bike park.)
Clearly broken and out of warranty, they sent me a new one for the cost of shipping.
