romic opinions

[yearoftiger]

so im thinking of upgrading my tomac rear suspension. right now it has a fox vanilla rc and im thinkin of getting a romic double d rear shock. I heard these shox are really nice. was wondering first of all, if my tomac uses a 2.75 by 8.75 shock and the romic im thinking of getting is a 9 by 2.75, will this still be able to fit my frame? second, is the romic a large improvement compared to the fox vanilla rc or are they just about even? the riding i do is freeride just for info. thanx

[Pat...]

ROmics are such good shocks. My 2 friends have them on their bullits and 1 has on his ac. they have so much progression: they are really soft, then stiffen up at the end. WHen I get a bullit, I want one when I have money. I have read reviews at mtbr. They work great for some people. FOr others, I heard they leak a lot.

[Zark]

Get your Vanilla pushed, its cheap and they feel great after the treatment. ~ $175 I think..

[Bicyclist]

I would go for PUSH also. Since you already have the shock, it's cheaper and it's completely custom.

[Jm_]

ROmics are such good shocks. My 2 friends have them on their bullits and 1 has on his ac. they have so much progression: they are really soft, then stiffen up at the end. WHen I get a bullit, I want one when I have money. I have read reviews at mtbr. They work great for some people. FOr others, I heard they leak a lot.
That's not the shock, the romic doesn't have "progression", it can be valved heavier for compression, but again, that isn't "progressiveness".

Romic has/had poor quality control and dyno/testing proceedures/equipment. That is why their stuff leaked, exploded, or the damping faded away. The "bad compression valve seal" was just a cover up for much worse problems that ran across the board. They may have fixed their act by now, but there were too many shocks that blew up. These days the performance is bested by the fox DHX, I can't think of a reason to get the romic over the fox. The fox has better tuning adjustments/abilities, better reliabilty (so far, but they've been holding up for a while now), better support, and a much better feel IMO. The romic was a good shock in it's time, but that time has passed.


edit: Yeah, go for the pushed vanilla, it's a worthwhile improvement and upgrade. It basically guts your current shock and replaces the internals with much better performing parts.

[merrrrjig]

go for the romics! They are great!

[buildyourown]

When Romics are good, they can feel awesome. Unfortunatly, this usually requires custom tuning by romic. Since they aren't very user adjustable, this can mean lots of frustration or downtime.

If your tight on money, I would push your RC. This will give you the best bang for your buck. If you can get a romic cheap, go for it, but keep your rc as a backup. Turner is selling off their old stock of romics for cheap. click the link in my sig for the turner sight.

[Smelly]

Get your Vanilla pushed, its cheap and they feel great after the treatment. ~ $175 I think..

:stupid:
$175 to make your shock better than a Romic.

[lovebunny]

i absolutly love my romic. roger has been nothing but courteous to me and when i ordered my shock he asked me all about how much i weigh and my type of riding. great service. the shock is wonderful as well. i like it much better than the 5th element i had before. its much more sensitive to small bumps than the platform shocks are. its great for racing. im not sure about hucking

[Smelly]

When Romics are good, they can feel awesome. Unfortunatly, this usually requires custom tuning by romic.


and then after you spend the money to get the shock custom tuned it'll just blow up on you anyway (at least that's what happened to me 3 times in a year)

[Kanter]

Get your RC PUSHED. Its less than $175. I think I paid $125.....

[Bicyclist]

Why risk the Romic blowing up when you can get a better, more adjustable, custom upgrade (PUSH) for less money?

[Cal]

Get the Romic it nice and they are great to deal with. I have never had a problem calling them and geting what I needed. Yes I have had the RC, RC Pushed, 5th, 6 way and the Romic all on the same bike. The romic is the only one I never had to send back to get rebuilt.

[BMXman]

so funny how people here act like the Pushed shocks don't blow up as well...do a search...EVERY shock fails eventually period!....D

[ChrisRobin]

Here's my experiece with Romic. The first one I had felt amazing and I loved it. Then it started leaking at the compression adjuster. So I borrowed a Fox RC off a buddy of mine. The small bump sensitivity was similar but when I got going fast with the bigger hits, the Fox RC sucked. I could feel it hanging up. Then I got another Romic shock off another buddy to get me through since I couldn't afford the down time. The rebound stopped working after a few weeks. Then I got a Stratos El Jefe and that works great. No problems so far.

[Lifer]

after 1k miles and on a trip to Southern Cali. Didn't stop me from riding (since it was coil), but it spewed its guts. That shock is old tech and not even close to the same class as 5th L I've been running for the last 2 years. There are too many better choices (out of the box) out there. Don't waste time/money on something that sucks to begin with.

[foesjunky]

I've raced a Romic for 2 years and it the only shock I'll run. Roger takes very good care of his customers!! :thumb: I'm so hooked on Romic if the frame can't use a Romic I won't race it. And yes I've tried the rest. Romic had a bad batch about a year ago and people think that defines Romic. :think:

[Red Bull]

Well if it means anything i love my DHX5.

[lovebunny]

see its funny that people compareromic to platform shocks. not evryone wants the platform damping. sure the platform makes it pedal great but it also takes away from small bump sensitivity, now for a lower travel bike i guess you want a 5th or whatever but for my big bike its romic all the way. it cant be beat imo

[ChrisRobin]

see its funny that people compareromic to platform shocks. not evryone wants the platform damping. sure the platform makes it pedal great but it also takes away from small bump sensitivity, now for a lower travel bike i guess you want a 5th or whatever but for my big bike its romic all the way. it cant be beat imo

Do you have a Romic shock on your BB7?

[Lifer]

see its funny that people compareromic to platform shocks. not evryone wants the platform damping. sure the platform makes it pedal great but it also takes away from small bump sensitivity, now for a lower travel bike i guess you want a 5th or whatever but for my big bike its romic all the way. it cant be beat imo
I love the 5th on my Bullit (7"). The Romic was on a Joker (6"), which I happily dumped on ebay over 2 years ago :)

[denjen]

I dont think that a 9" shock will work on a Tomac. If you take the shock out the linkage only opens up just a little more before it stops.

[seismic]

see its funny that people compareromic to platform shocks. not evryone wants the platform damping. sure the platform makes it pedal great but it also takes away from small bump sensitivity, now for a lower travel bike i guess you want a 5th or whatever but for my big bike its romic all the way. it cant be beat imo


For a big travel bike I would never want a Romic since they are not very progressive and cannot handle a high Nitrogen pressure (or whatever gas they are loaded with).....I could never make the shock stop bottoming out.. :think:

[JRogers]

Some of you guys are missing the bigger problem here: don't put anything but a 8.75x2.75 shock on that bike. It will mess up the linkage and rates and steepen the already relatively steep head angle. It might work (never tried) but it cannot be a good idea. Everything on the bike was made for a certain length shock- use that.

Also consider fit issues. I have never seen a DHX, 5th, Swinger and a few others mounted to small size (I have seen some of these on other sizes, though). When I contacted Tomac to see what would fit smalls and if it was different from other sizes because of clearances, they did not know.

I have a small 2003 204 with a Shiver up front and a Pushed Fox RC on the back. So far, it's been great. I do not have any lift serviced DH done yet but I've ridden it quite a bit on some fast, rough trails and some jumps and drops. No problems yet. It's not a huge difference from the stock RC but it does pedal better, bottom out softer and react in a more controlled manner in general. I also think it's a step up in reliability. I was not blown away, but it's certainly better. I did like the stock shock on the 204; I think it's better than on most bikes because of the stiffness of the frame and progressive linkage. Push just gives you a little more edge. I think the biggest improvement was in the pedaling. There's less movement even though I am running a spring that's 50# softer. I also went with Push to keep the feel of the rear suspension similar to the front. A Fox and a Marz fork are pretty similar in feel- active and plush when set up right.

If I were you, I'd go for the Push option. It's cheap, quick and, at this point, pretty much proven to improve any shock. Dealing with them was quick and easy. If you have some money to spend or cost is not a big concern, and you are sure of the fit, I'd go for a DHX. Simply a great product...but more than twice the price of a Push job.

[yearoftiger]

thanx for all the info..especially JROOGERS for letting me know that a bigger shock will ruin the geometry. I wasn't too sure if it would mess it up either so i guess im gonna assume it will.

[frorider]

some in this thread need a short history lesson. :nuts:

when the Romic came out several years ago, fox did not have propedal. Romic got some cred as a stable platform shock (hydraulic SP, not anything like the curnutt/manitou/5th element system) and as a result Romic gained OEM market share. on mine (nearly 3 yrs old; roger dialled it in for me when i visited the factory) the SP knob has a noticeable effect on bob. my single pivot bike pedals well w/ the romic, and pedals like a$$ with the old vanilla RC.

pro pedal vanilla came out eventually, and i think fox has largely fought off the romic threat. now w/ the dhx 5 i think fox has moved ahead of the market. in other words, despite the good performance i've been lucky enough to have w/ my romic, my next shock will be the dhx...all that user adjustability. :cool:

i have had good experiences with Push. very professional company. however in terms of giving a stable platform, that's not really what they're about (and they are up front about that) but their internals really improved the descending ability on loose rocks on my float air trailbike.

personally i'm a big believer in having 2 shocks for all my bikes--even a crappy backup shock will do the job while you wait a week or two for your good shock to get serviced/tweaked/whatever. so that's maybe an argument against getting your vanilla push'ed i guess, but it depends on your cashflow. if you have the $$$, get the dhx 5.0.