ive been daydreaming about the grip 2 base vales for a while now.
the 2020 and older are a degressive recessed piston where the adjuster preloads the shim down into the recess as the adjuster is turned. The issue is that the preload creates a threashold which must be overcome, and secondly that using a piston thats recessed instead of dished exposes the entire perimeter of the shim to flow so its a very degressive setup.
On to VVC, it must be understood that vvc is not a ramp as in adding preload, there is no height change only the distance from center to where the vvc plate makes contact with the leaf spring. The further out the plate contacts the leaf the softer it is, the further in, the stiffer it is. This simulates the effect of varying clamp shim size rather than preload.
I had an idea to fix my 2020 grip 2 cartridge. A different base valve piston, one with 3 or 4 ports flat top, a shim stack, topped with another inverted shim stack backed with a cup, actuated by the high speed adjuster.
I stole the idea from the bottom picture, a kyb "leaf spring" mid valve labeled "new KYB style float", only in my implementation the cup would be moveable. The stack against the piston would operate as a normal stack, the stack against the cup would be preloaded, and would be stiffer than the stack against the piston (unlike how its shown), so the piston stack would deflect first, and the preloaded cup stack would allow the entire piston stack to lift off at high velocity.
but there is lots of tinkering to do with that..... Im certain the 2020 grip 2 recessed perimeter piston is not a good candidate for this system, so a new piston would have to be sourced or made, the cup is easy to make, or could be sourced from a motorcycle application.
I can make all that shit, but i have like 750,000 other projects, and 90% of them already go "why did I get myself into this?" and the testing, and fuggin around with things like that, combined with the massive friction of the air side of these forks......... which makes the dampening feel bad anyways.
I said fuggit and threw an RC2 back in there..... and tell people i like it better.
maybe a good step would be to toss the vvc or preload system and rely on a properly tailored shim stack on a reasonable piston design...... like every other suspension critical application uses.
