[gravityfreak]

Hey gents,

Both the Pike and the new XFusion offerings have been getting rave reviews, and given my experience with the XFusion Slant, I agree that they are making outstanding products.

I am building a Banshee Spitfire v2 and have a CCDB Air mounted up. I'm trying to make this build something that will keep me happy for the next few years, and while I have all of the other parts picked out, the fork is still a troubling part that I can't seem to nail down.

As my review buried somewhere in the boards states, I'm very happy with my XFusion Slant on my Chromag Samurai. It's a great fork, albeit a bit tall, and it seems to handle everything extremely well. That being said, we all know how much everyone seems to be loving the Pike. I haven't had more than an hour or so on the Pike and so it's very hard to tell whether the performance is truly superior, but I need to make a call here in the next 2 weeks and decide which fork I want. BikeMagic did a shootout-type review, but they didn't make very concrete points and all in all it was a pretty poorly executed test IMO. Anyone have any experience that might help me decide on one or the other?

Cheers.

I had a Slant for about a month which is identical mechanically to the Sweep. It had a creaking crown/steerer tube junction which after sending back to the distribution twice was not resolved. With a forthcoming riding trip I accepted his offer of a refund and bought a Pike instead as I felt that should I run into problems over seas - this fork would be easier to get parts for. To date I've ridden the Pike only once on my regular training loop.

I'm a competitive Gravity Enduro racer with a DH background and weight just over 80Kgs ready to ride.

Of the two forks, I preferred the feel of the Slant and feel that it may have better damping. Certainly it is plusher through rock gardens / square edge hits etc. The negatives (besides the issue above) were that it was harder to set up (have to add oil to air spring to increase progression / ramp) and from new had quite a high break-away threshold which made setting sag a chore. But after several rides it felt amazing. I never felt however that I was able to achieve a balanced feel with the CCDB Air.

The Pike by contrast is smooth right out the box and was dead easy to set up. Pumped to the recommended pressure after adding one volume reducer, set rebound and off I went. Let 5 psi out on the ride and it was perfectly set up and felt much more balanced with the rear. However, the damping didn't feel AS controlled as the Slant. Don't get me wrong - it feels good - but the Slant had me shaking my head in disbelief (and I came off a Marzocchi 55 RC3 Ti which is a proper fork). The Pike transmits more feedback to the hands and arms and - while likely a set-up issue as I've not had it long - the rebound on the Pike doesn't feel as controlled as the Slant).

Given that the Slant was exactly HALF the price of the Pike, if I had had no issue with the steerer creaking and felt that the support would be there is I had future issues - I would have NO hesitation in taking the Slant back.

 

[Verskis]

I never felt however that I was able to achieve a balanced feel with the CCDB Air.

Could you please elaborate this a bit? how did the rear end feel compared to the Slant and the Pike?

By the way, thanks for the great real world feedback on the forks! I am really curious on the Slant, Pike and the new Manitou Mattoc, I think one of them is going to be my new fork before the summer.

 

[gravityfreak]

Could you please elaborate this a bit? how did the rear end feel compared to the Slant and the Pike?

By the way, thanks for the great real world feedback on the forks! I am really curious on the Slant, Pike and the new Manitou Mattoc, I think one of them is going to be my new fork before the summer.

I'll do my best....
It felt as though the Slant had less compression damping than the DB. Now of course I could have adjusted the DB to match the fork by reducing compression but that would have been silly. I must emphasize that this feeling was doing the bounce test around the car park where the bike would feel more soft up front. On the trail however, this feeling was not noticeable at all and was not a problem. Where it was a problem was in trying to get the fork set up initially where to get a balanced feel, I would be running more air to stiffen up the front but this wouldn't give me correct sag. I must also add that initially, because there is quite a lot of stiction from new, I would run lower air pressure to counteract the stiction which exacerbated the soft front end. Once the fork began to break in, I was able to up the pressure a bit and that helped too. I ended up using Finishline Fluro Oil during the break in phase to reduce stiction so I could get the balance right.

Honestly though - these are minor niggles to begin with and which decreased with every ride. As I said in my post, if I hadn't had the creaking crown issue I would not have got the Pike - the Slant is an EXCELLENT fork.

 

[Verskis]

Thanks gravityfreak!

 

[ZHendo]

Thank gravityfreak, that's very interesting...I have a Slant on my Chromag and have been very impressed with the damping just as you have been, but it's on a hardtail so it is hard to tell how nicely it will play when applied to my Banshee Spitfire's CCDBA. Interesting about the Pike though, I've only had one ride on a Pike and it was so short that it was hard for me to get a good impression.

The BOS still stands out as the most appealing, but by far the most expensive. I can get a Pike or new lowered XFusion Metric for the same price, but according to published weights on the manufacturer websites that comes out to a 0.9lb weight difference, which is pretty substantial. Any insight on the HLR damper relative to the Pike?

 

[gravityfreak]

No probs - hope this is helping your decision making.
As you already know the Slant has the RL2 damper which has no compression adjustment at all. I was very uncertain about this given I like to tune my stuff and haven't run a fork without full adjustability in years. But here's the thing that I have come to accept; when a fork makes offers high and low speed compression adjustment - there may be less incentive for them to get the base tune correct and therefore leave it up to us to get right via the adjustments. Both the Slant and the Pike have excellent base tunes and on neither have I felt the need to tune them (much). So, if a lack of adjustability is something you're nervous about - don't be - the stock tunes are both excellent.

Btw - re BOS; I was offered a cost pricing by the local BOS distributor here in Australia because I've had some good race results but turned it down because BOS has a bad reputation. The product is very good when it's working but, should you have an issue, getting it sorted can be a nightmare. 6 Months on and my decision was the right one - the local distributor gave up on BOS because he said the French guys were impossible to deal with. If you race as I do and travel as I do, having a fork you know you can get parts for at short notice becomes a big deal. I'd rather a fork that is 95% of the performance of a BOS (if BOS is 100%) but which is 100% reliable.

 

[ZHendo]

In my case, Pike adds $200 over the price of the Sweep, and $20 over the cost of a lowered Metric...it's a tough call.

 

[norbar]

The Rune frame (and any frame with this same U shaped leverage curve like the Sunday's and a low average leverage) are a real PITA to tune for.

G2K's CCDB definitely feels like crap on that frame. We tried a bunch of different air pressures and settings. When you hit edges the shock just feels sorta constipated, but then still bottoms out.

Then you have the wrong can size. The legend has a slight U leverage curve and I use the DB air with no problems. My shock feels more active than the rc4 it replaced and I bottom it as much if not less.

@Gravityfreak I don't get it. What's silly in setting the rear compression damping so it works well with the front?

 

[gravityfreak]

@Gravityfreak I don't get it. What's silly in setting the rear compression damping so it works well with the front?

Silly wasn't the best term. I guess I should have said "not idea". Essentially, I have the rear set up the way I want it and by matching it to the front, while i'd have a balanced bike - it would be way under damped in the rear. Bear in mind that this imbalance proved to be a non-issue on the trail.

 

[norbar]

Silly wasn't the best term. I guess I should have said "not idea". Essentially, I have the rear set up the way I want it and by matching it to the front, while i'd have a balanced bike - it would be way under damped in the rear. Bear in mind that this imbalance proved to be a non-issue on the trail.

Hence you should set it up on the trail as the DB air manual suggests Also you could have always added damping in the front and you wouldn't have an underdamped rear. It may not be true for you but I see many people runing way too low damping setup in their forks based on carpark feel

 

[gravityfreak]

Hence you should set it up on the trail as the DB air manual suggests Also you could have always added damping in the front and you wouldn't have an underdamped rear. It may not be true for you but I see many people runing way too low damping setup in their forks based on carpark feel

You can't add damping to the Slant. It has no compression adjustment. Been doing this for 25 years - think I'm ok at it.

 

[no skid marks]

You can't add damping to the Slant. It has no compression adjustment. Been doing this for 25 years - think I'm ok at it.

There's always a way to add damping ;-)


Avvy open bath cart out for those that don't fit in the stock damping range, because of body weight, riding style, ideals or just if you love tweaking knobs.

 

[time-bomb]

You can't add damping to the Slant. It has no compression adjustment. Been doing this for 25 years - think I'm ok at it.

Nope. Peoples on here always know way more stuff about bikes and tuning than peoples on here.

 

[ZHendo]

On the stock RL2 cartridge the most you can do is crack into it and beef up the LSC using...wait for it...SHIMZ!!!!! You can also, as gravityfreak said, add a bit of oil to the air spring to milk a little more bottom out resistance out of it, though I've found the Slant on my Chromag to be surprisingly progressive.

I ended up going the cost saving route and bought the Sweep - I couldn't justify the significant extra cost of a Pike or the cost/weight of a Metric, and experience on the Slant has been excellent. If I can't get the fork to cooperate with the CCDBA I may crack into it and play around with the shims or potentially discuss retrofitting an HLR catridge from the Revel into the Sweep.

 

[supercow]

Re BOS: All the rumours about them being difficult and a pain to work with is true (the company that is).
Luckily there's a distributor in Ireland that's had a good long standing relationship with them, so I'm in the fortunate position to own one, with relatively local support, should the need arise.

The CCDBA / Deville combo turns the spitfire into a playful, mini DH shred sled.
I slapped this vid tother yesterday as I was keen to share the footage with a friend of mine (who wanted to see BikePark Wales)

Sorry, some of the footage is proper shaky, but those sections are pretty gnar and rocky for a trail centre. The suspension combo just shrugged that **** off though.