No idea. I'll tell you when I get it. Never ridden Zeb nor HC97 nor Luftkappe... went straight to potato on this. (Actually, no, that'd have been a Secus, but still...)
I've had a HC97 since they came out. I can't really remember the stock damper TBH, but the fork travel/control is outstanding and gets better the faster you smash.
I ran an HC97 when I was running Lyriks. It provided a significant increase in overall damping that paired well with the super low stiction 27.5 Lyrik I had when I bought it. When I moved to 29 the new Lyrik I bought had significantly more stiction. Combined with the Secus I was getting too much feedback in my hands and wound up going back to the stock damper. Getting the bushings sized helped that Lyrik quite a bit but by that point I'd sold the HC97. One weird quirk I had with mine - when I was pedaling on smooth ground, pushing down lightly on the fork it felt locked out, kind of like an old Brain shock, but as soon as it hit anything it opened up. No significant performance impact from it but it was weird. I theorized it being a side effect of the shimless design it uses.
Interesting. The YariK I am running (not sure which era of Charger damper is in there, honestly) was sticky and I thought it was a bushing issue till I lubed the air spring...I had serviced the lowers on receipt, which was intuitive (just like the old Shermans and Dorado I used to run) , but I'm generally used to open-bath forks and coil springs so didn't know I had to do that at first. 15 more minutes of work and it runs like glass.
The damping has a point where it jumps pretty suddenly in progression, which I don't like, but the token setup is yet unknown to me...another new tech I'm not familiar with. Guessing taking one out might help.
Either way, it's going to be a backup once the Zeb is mounted up, so I'm not too worried about it.
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