boxxer team v.s. totem solo

I would reccomend the Boxxer, as I have seen all models of the Totem fork with problems. New the Totem feels amazing however every one I have seen has had some manner of fluid/cartridge issues. My Boxxer has had no problems aside from a leaky seal that was easily fixed. That being said however, after less than a season the Boxxer is getting the boot in favor of a '09 Fox 40RC2. Lately I have had a few issmues with the Boxxer bottoming out, especially in g-out situations. I've been noticing that the fork is fine through 6 inches of the travel but at the last 2 inches it loves to blow through it, all the way to the crown baby, funnnn.

Ill chime in. I have a 1st gen solo air. It did piss oil out of the wiper seals on both sides, but it wasnt enough to slow me down, though it was annoying. After a full days of abuse youll feel the need to wipe the uppers and lowers down. Its a light, stiff fork and is simple to work on(add oil) or pull the motion control out if needed. Its hard to peg this feeling, but it seems if I run enough air pressure to sag 25-30% the fork seems a bit harsh, and if I run it slighly lower it feels good over small/medium hits but tends to blow through its travel. Of course dialing up the high speed compression helps, but then it seems to loose a lot of that coil/oil feel that everyone likes in a DH fork.

I tend to run it slightly lower on air pressure and high speed compression and trade off semi frequent bottoming(say 5-8 times on a run down upper to lower whistler) Im not sure Id give another one a shot and will probably go back to dual crown coil/oil forks in the future.

I ran a Totem solo air last year on my SX trail, and I now have a Boxxer team on my demo 8.
If you are a DH racer trying to push your limits, go with the Boxxer team for sure. It tracks better at speed and will hold a line better in off camber trails.
The totem is stiff front to back, but your handlebar jerks more at speed on fast DH courses.
Plus, they have the Boxxer line fairly dialed now with reliability.
Just check out the World Cup races, you see a ton of Boxxer teams and world cups for a reason.

Although my riding style is more DH than FR, and I'm fairly light weight, I'm thinking about switching over to the Totem coil, for it's lighter weight, it's single-crown versatility, and it's burly lowers (matches with a Transition Dirtbag better than the 32mm Boxxer series).

I'm still on the fence as the Totem isn't cheap and I love the performance of the Boxxer. I've yet to fully utilize all if it's features, although I've got a soft spring in there now, with both preload discs removed, it sags at less than 25% with me on it, and with both discs removed, about 20mms under it's own weight I'm 125lbs without gear, a hack of a rider but still not fast (new to gravity riding). If I send it on a few jumps I'll use almost all of the travel but typically I'll end up just at 95% travel usage.

Any advice guys?

BTW: here's a couple of pics, just because I wrote a lot.

boxxer, has more travel

joelsman said:

boxxer, has more travel

Click to expand...

20mm isn't much of a difference. What you should consider is single vs dual crown, steerer diameter (is your headtube 1.5"?), axle to crown (of course, I think both have the same atc), and more or less, weight (slight advantage goes to Totem).


For me, a bit of it is cosmetics too, the 40mm stanchion looks much more beefier and fitting for my bike. But I just can't seem to let go of the Team, I absolutely love that fork, performs flawlessly.

BTW: here's one with a Totem:

if you are going to be doing any sort of DH racing i would definately get the boxxer not only because it is more race oriented but if you crash and you have a single crown then your bars are gonna spin around probably several times and it is a bitch trying to get that **** undone! and it ****s up your cables. the triple crown will make it much easier to pop up from a crash and keep goin. so its up to you but thats my 2 cents.

the totem is a whopping 3mm shorter than the boxxer (so it is actually longer for the given travel like all single crowns).