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2005 Boxxers any good?

- seb

Turbo Monkey
Apr 10, 2002
2,924
1
UK
My mate thought he was buying some never-used cheap 2006 boxxer teams, but from his description over the phone it sounds like his forks look like



Which I think means they're '05s (yes I know those are Rides, he says his say "Team" on the arch).

IIRC boxxers for 03/04 were rubbish, and in 06 they switched to motion control which was considered good? What about 05, are they the same as 03/04, or the same as 06, or something different?

For comparison my 06s look like

 

Zark

Hey little girl, do you want some candy?
Oct 18, 2001
6,254
7
Reno 911
2005's are hydracoil damping....aka ported damper like a JrT...They spike at speed are hard to tune and generally suck compared to the newer Boxxers
 

01yz125

Chimp
Jun 21, 2006
56
0
see if ur friend can save up a little more cash for 06+ newer. he'll be alot more happier and it'l save money in the long run
 

- seb

Turbo Monkey
Apr 10, 2002
2,924
1
UK
He can easily afford newer ones, I told him to go for these as AFAIK 06 are basically functionally identical to 08, and they were half price, seemingly just because they were 2yrs old (but never been ridden).

Now that we've found out they're 05s it changes everything - have instructed him to take them back.
 

ChrisRobin

Turbo Monkey
Jan 30, 2002
3,346
190
Vancouver
They're 'not bad'... although my big problem is you need to take apart the ENTIRE fork to get to the high speed compression adjuster. That alone makes me want to sell mine.
 

Steve M

Turbo Monkey
Mar 3, 2007
1,991
45
Whistler
2005's are hydracoil damping....aka ported damper like a JrT...They spike at speed are hard to tune
Not true - HC2 compression dampers are not ported dampers, they have a high-speed blowoff too. They work alright but the Moco stuff is unquestionably better.
 

Jm_

sled dog's bollocks
Jan 14, 2002
18,850
9,556
AK
Not true - HC2 compression dampers are not ported dampers, they have a high-speed blowoff too. They work alright but the Moco stuff is unquestionably better.
Just for old times sakes;

The old boxxers are pumping-rod forks, like the Jr T, and while they were not quite as simplistic as the Jr T, they operated on the same basic principles. The damping was a joke, and we told people this for years, then MoCo comes out and people are "blown away". No crap, we told you this for like 5 years. RS sat on 1970s technology since the boxxer's inception in 1998 (production) until the 2006 stuff. RS is doing pretty good these days in terms of product development, quality and performance. It's enough to make a lot of people look past the above and the other crap they tried to pass off as adequate. I wouldn't mind riding many of the new products (I've tried a few), but those old boxxers were simply terrible. A shiver, Super T or monster was many times better (damping systems and seals that actually worked). Some of the other stuff like stratos was far better as well as long as you didn't have any relability problems. From the beginning, the "hydracoil" pumping rod damper was simply substandard and a joke.
 

Steve M

Turbo Monkey
Mar 3, 2007
1,991
45
Whistler
Just for old times sakes;

The old boxxers are pumping-rod forks, like the Jr T, and while they were not quite as simplistic as the Jr T, they operated on the same basic principles. The damping was a joke, and we told people this for years, then MoCo comes out and people are "blown away". No crap, we told you this for like 5 years. RS sat on 1970s technology since the boxxer's inception in 1998 (production) until the 2006 stuff. RS is doing pretty good these days in terms of product development, quality and performance. It's enough to make a lot of people look past the above and the other crap they tried to pass off as adequate. I wouldn't mind riding many of the new products (I've tried a few), but those old boxxers were simply terrible. A shiver, Super T or monster was many times better (damping systems and seals that actually worked). Some of the other stuff like stratos was far better as well as long as you didn't have any relability problems. From the beginning, the "hydracoil" pumping rod damper was simply substandard and a joke.
I won't deny that it was crude as, but it worked ok. Unlike the Marz forks at the time it actually had some compression damping and a much more linear feel which kept the front end up a lot better. They weren't as smooth to bounce on in the carpark which IMO is why a lot of people rubbished them. 1970s tech? Kinda. Translated into a reasonable ride in the real world though. The real issue with the HC2 compression wasn't the "pumping rod" mechanism (btw by your definition, the CCDB is a "pumping rod" damper since the piston isn't allowing through flow most of the time, just forcing all the oil through the circuit) or the actual compression assembly, that stuff is fine, it was the fact that it pushed far too much oil. Most fork dampers (incl Moco which is basically a ripoff of TPC designed to get around the patents) slow the oil down by only displacing a small amount of it, which means you can have much smaller, better-controlled apertures. For example, current Boxxers displace oil at a rate of 1/4 the shaft speed. The old Boxxers displaced oil at 2.5 TIMES the shaft speed - this is essentially pushing oil at TEN TIMES the speed of the current ones. It means you have a chronically low-pressure, high flow rate damper which is prone to cavitation and flow inconsistency. That is why Boxxers used to have that gritty kind of feel when you bounced on them, but the actual amount of damping wasn't miles off what you wanted. The rebound did suck, that was (and still is) just a ported thing (tho with the new Boxxers it works a lot better because of the lower oil flow rate). In fact I have a custom rebound setup in my fork that I'm testing atm but that's another story.

Boxxer seals haven't been a problem since they re-did the seals in like 2003, in fact in 4 years of owning Boxxers (04, 05 and 07 lowers) I've never actually blown a seal, and I never replaced em within a year either.


But it's ok, we all know how much you love RS...
 

Jm_

sled dog's bollocks
Jan 14, 2002
18,850
9,556
AK
(btw by your definition, the CCDB is a "pumping rod" damper since the piston isn't allowing through flow most of the time, just forcing all the oil through the circuit)
No, it has a shim-stack, and while that may not be the primary way of tuning it (well, you can't take apart most rear shocks and do that anyway), it still functions. Qualifying the amount of oil passing through would take some work, but depending on the size of the bleeds obviously more oil could be passed around the piston, again, it's still functioning as a shim stack though, blowing off when needed.

In any case, you qualified most of my comments about the old boxxer damper in the 2nd half of that paragraph, pretty pathetic compared to everyone else. When fox got in with their dampers (damn good ones) they probably gave RS the kick in the a$$ that they needed, that and the aquisition by sram, but that old stuff was a joke, sorry. It only "worked" because some people rode it and didn't know any better.
 

- seb

Turbo Monkey
Apr 10, 2002
2,924
1
UK
Am I right in thinking the old HC stuff was better than HC2? Certainly I had a 2000 boxxer that I ran up to 2003, and I loved it. I then bought some 2003 boxxers and they were a piece of ****! (Now very happy with my 2006s).
 

Steve M

Turbo Monkey
Mar 3, 2007
1,991
45
Whistler
Am I right in thinking the old HC stuff was better than HC2? Certainly I had a 2000 boxxer that I ran up to 2003, and I loved it. I then bought some 2003 boxxers and they were a piece of ****! (Now very happy with my 2006s).
2003s had some issues caused by compression spiking since the check valve through-flow for the rebound assembly wasn't big enough. Once you drilled that out they were ok.
 

Steve M

Turbo Monkey
Mar 3, 2007
1,991
45
Whistler
No, it has a shim-stack, and while that may not be the primary way of tuning it (well, you can't take apart most rear shocks and do that anyway), it still functions. Qualifying the amount of oil passing through would take some work, but depending on the size of the bleeds obviously more oil could be passed around the piston, again, it's still functioning as a shim stack though, blowing off when needed.

In any case, you qualified most of my comments about the old boxxer damper in the 2nd half of that paragraph, pretty pathetic compared to everyone else. When fox got in with their dampers (damn good ones) they probably gave RS the kick in the a$$ that they needed, that and the aquisition by sram, but that old stuff was a joke, sorry. It only "worked" because some people rode it and didn't know any better.
Note where I said "most of the time". The TTX40 Ohlins dampers from which the DB takes its technology doesn't have any shim stack on the main piston. Most shim stacks don't just "blow off when needed" (unlike the DB one which apparently does), they are specifically laid out to provide a controlled deflection which in turn gives you the desired HS curve.

What you're still missing is that Boxxers were the first fork that provided real amounts of compression damping and let you ride them aggressively without constantly being at the bottom end of their travel (unlike Marzocchis of the time). Manitou came out with the TPC stuff which was better but the Manitou chassis have typically sucked - the Carbons broke, the Dorados were relatively easy to break and were heavier/flexier than Boxxers by some margin, and most or all of their DH models from that time had seal issues - far moreso than RS. Had Manitou managed to make a reliable, well-rounded package (oh and at a competitive price - Doritos were nuts) they would have killed the Boxxer (because their dampers were certainly better) but they didn't.

Like I said, they were pretty crude, but they were effective. A lot of people judged them by carpark testing, where they certainly didn't feel as smooth as the Marz/Manitou equivalents, but when you actually want to ride hard they offered equal or better performance. The problem is, as it's always been with bikes, most people do the carpark test, get whatever it is into their heads, then believe it into existence on the trail.