[b.utters]

I blew up my vivid 5.1 on the weekend and now I'm looking for a new shock. I'm a bit short on cash atm so I have mostly been looking at second hand shocks with about a $400 limit.

So I'm considering an RC4 a Double Barrel or a Stoy. Not sure keen to go back to a vivid.

Does anyone have any recommendations as to what to go for?

I can get an Stoy pretty cheap but the only problem is that it's tuned for a Glory, has anyone opened one of these up before and was it easy?

Cheers

Nick

 

[cjm102]

I have been riding a 2010 demo for 2.5 years now, I've smashed and replaced just about everything, forks, cranks, brakes etc etc. Here is what I have done on the rear shock…

I have run the stock RC4, but it was a 2009 and I think there’s been quite a few internal updates since. I couldn't ever get this shock to work, it was sticky and over dampened at slow speed, under dampened on the big stuff. No matter what I did, I just couldn't get the setup to how I wanted.

I purchased second hand Vivid Air, it was a mid-tune. I think the leverage ratio required heavier dampening, but I didn't know this until after I purchased the shock. Anyway this shock was amazing! I had the setup much like an old review on vitamtb, with the low speed compression almost on full. All of a sudden the bike was so stable and it took everything better from loamy pedalling sections to square edge bumps. The only thing I had against the shock it was so unreliable. I rebuilt the shock twice in a small period of owning it for 2 months. It was leaking air pass the main chamber seal, sinking into its travel half way down a run. If it didn't have this issue, I would still be running the shock now.

I had enough of the Vivid and had the RC4 rebuilt and custom tuned by the local Fox distributor. Good shock, with all the latest updates inside and a HUGE improvement over the STD one. But this shock never felt as good as the Vivid.

Lately I've been thinking about why the Vivid felt so good, I think it has a lot to do with the progressive nature of the air shock. I'm not sure if you can achieve this with anything else, I run my RC4 with low pressure 160psi and the bottom-out wound almost all the way in to give a progressive characteristic, but I run a soft spring @35% sag and this is probably too much for this frame imo.



Just some info.

 

[b.utters]

Thanks mate.

As it turns out I found a second hand Stoy last night with the right tune so that puppy will be going on in a week or two.