Hey everyone welcome or welcome back!
It wasn't long ago when I looked at this SID 120mm, 35 millimeter stanchions and I called it a mini Pike.
Well, today I have a SID Ultimate 120mm
so let's take a closer look at these two forks side by side, see what the differences are between them.
And if you guys paid attention to RockShox the Select and the Ultimate
are the only two forks available to buy in the store.
The Select Plus + only being available with fully built bikes.
And while a lot of the online articles are going to be focusing on the different damper being used on these two forks
I think there are a few other differences that are worth mentioning here.
And one thing I couldn't find anywhere is whether the lowers of these forks are different in any way
and some of the features directly linked to the lowers mentioned by RockShox would be Torque cap compatible, that's the same on both,
thru axle, same on both, post mount caliper - this is a 180 mm for these SID 120,
the recommended air pressure sticker still here on the left leg.
You have the nicely sculpted arch here and the availability of that little fender that comes from RockShox .
This looks actually pretty neat you see it here already installed on my Select fork.
Same snap on hose holder here on the left leg and overall the shape of these boxy cuts that you see on the lowers it's absolutely identical on both
so my conclusion is that the lowers between the SID ultimate and the SID Select forks is the same.
And that includes the bottom of the lower leg here where you have those deep cutouts
however this little rebound adjuster, so on the damper side, this is different on the Ultimate
and the nice long aluminum red knob...
this was replaced by a simple or what it looks like a simple hex key.
And i'm sure this was done just to save a few grams, how many grams???
The old knob is 11 grams, the SID Ultimate one is 4 grams, so here is your 7 grams saved right there!
As for adjustability, the Charger RL damper of the Select will give you 21 clicks here on the bottom
and that's the same with what the new Race Day damper provides you but you have to reach into this lower leg a little bit.
And talking about the damper this is the biggest difference between the two forks
The Charger Race Day that you see over here on the Ultimate is built to be a lot lighter than any RockShox damper we've ever had before.
This is a bladder system just like the previous Charger and you see here the Open and Closed position
with this Closed position being pretty firm lockout.
On the Charger RL damper you're gonna have one, two, three, four, five clicks between fully open compression and lockout
however this lockout on the Select will not be as firm as the one I mentioned in the Ultimate fork.
In terms of performance the Charger RL, even though it's an entry-level Charger
it's supposed to be more linear, this is very similar in performance to the Grip damper from FOX.
Charger Race Day, as the name implies, is more race oriented so it's gonna be a bit more supportive
but it might feel a bit harsher as you go deeper into the travel,
but you do know that we're splitting hairs here and Race Day is a very good damper
and you can also retrofit all the forks with this as an upgrade so that's pretty cool.
Otherwise both of these dampers are supposed to use the new Maxima Plush oil that's in here inside of the right leg
and you have these ultra low friction SKF seals and that's used on both forks.
On the left leg, so the air spring side, you have the same DebonAir and even though this is 35 millimeter like the Pike
RockShox mentions that the design of this SID air spring is unique so it won't be backwards compatible with any other fork.
That has to do with a new position of that equalizing dimple here in the stanchion somewhere.
You can see the anodized black and the 110 and 120 mm travel that this fork is available in.
They call the DebonAir highly tunable because you can use the volume spacers to adjust the air spring.
The 120 by default doesn't have any spacers inside
you can install a maximum of 3 if you want to,
and you would do that by removing this top cap which by the way looks a bit different
only because the Ultimate only has a Schrader valve cap on it.
You can see the Select having a different type of cover, you can obviously install that cover here on the Ultimate,
and that brings me up here to the CSU which is nicely sculpted again versus previous forks.
If you look carefully here on the Ultimate
you're gonna see that the top of it is actually machined compared to the Select
I am sure that was done just to save a little bit of weight.
And talking about weight, 1553 grams for the Ultimate with the thru axle,
1515g without the thru axle, that is with the 6.5 inch steerer and that crown race already installed.
And that 1553g is pretty much 150 grams lighter than the Select fork
big part of that coming from weight difference in the damper.
Add the little mudguard to the pile - 1583 grams, pretty impressive for a 35 millimeter stanchion fork.
And as you guys probably already know, the direct competition is this FOX 34 Step Cast
the 2022 model comes up to a whopping 1503 grams, that is with the axle a crown race and similar length steer
but I'm gonna have to cover this in a separate video.
So what would be my conclusions about SID Ultimate as opposed to the SID Select that we run for a few months?
First of all don't shy away from the SID Select, it's a solid fork and I have a full review on it
where I give you a little bit of riding impressions.
SID Ultimate, if you want to save that extra 150 grams, by all means,
but I would love to hear your guys opinion if you had the chance to actually ride the Ultimate back to back with something like SID Select.
What do you think about this? Do you have any questions for me?
Let me know in the comments below,
hope you found this useful, don't forget to like, subscribe, and comment,
and until next time hope to see you folks on the trails.
Cheers guys, cheers!