Hey everyone, how's it going?
If you were in the market for a new Rockshox fork as of late,
you would have found that they have the Select, Select Plus and Ultimate versions of them.
I have a PIKE Select Plus 2020 over here, let's check it out!
I don't know about you but I've been running the PIKE at least on one of my bikes since 2015,
and for me the Rockshox Pike is one of the gold standards for trail riding.
These days it is available in Ultimate, Select and Select Plus.
Available being a way of saying, because Select Plus only comes OEM, meaning you buy it with a new bike.
But if you can find it as a fresh takeoff, I think this is a great deal and you'll see why by the end of my video.
As usual, the information about the fork is here at the back of the right leg. In my case I have a 140 mm travel 29er, with 51 mm offset.
They do have these in anything between 37, 42, 44, and 51 millimeter offset,
110 to 160 mm travel, both 29 and 27.5, and you can fit tires as wide as 2.8.
In the last few years, these forks have seen quite a few improvements.
Whether it was fine tuning of the Charger damper,
or the changes to the air spring which I think were more substantial.
DebonAir as a marketing name was first used by SRAM with their rear shocks,
and it meant more volume for the negative chamber.
It's the same with the forks, negative chamber being down here
and a bigger positive chamber.
Negative chamber has to do with small bump sensitivity,
something that third-party tuners out there like Vorsprung Suspension in Whistler
have been doing for quite a few years.
My fork is a 2020 and it has quite a big negative chamber.
Apparently it is too big, and that's why in 2021
the DebonAir air spring has been tuned again to remove some of that.
There's upgrade kits available and I'll put the links in the description below.
The air spring feel is tunable using bottomless tokens.
And another thing that they've done recently,
they've actually moved the sag gradients here on the air spring which kind of makes a lot of sense.
If you look at the older Rockshox forks,
you had the sag gradients here on the right leg.
Well, the damper has nothing to do with the sag so that kind of makes sense, maybe somebody brought it up to them.
Black aluminum stanchions are used by the PIKE just like their other premium forks.
These are 35 mm stanchions which are pretty stiff.
As for the colors that the PIKE comes in, this is called diffusion Black,
they also have a glossy black and the Ultimate comes into a light silver
that reminds me of the PIKE logo over here.
On that same left leg, you have the approximate pressure based on your weight,
but I would actually recommend going to their Trailhead application or web page,
and just plug in your serial number to get some good information and suggestions from them.
You would remove this air spring cap to adjust the pressure in your fork.
Also, if you use a cassette tool ,you can remove this cap altogether
and that's where you can alter the number of tokens installed in your fork.
By the way, check your service manual to read more details about that.
Also, on the left side you have the clip for your brake hose.
And talking about brakes, post mount calipers and the minimum disc you can use with this fork it's 180 mm.
This fork is Torque Cap compatible and it's a Boosted fork, 15 x110 mm.
Torque Cap refers to these wider cutouts here on the fork leg.
They take normal hubs but also the Torque Cap end caps for the hubs
to provide a stiffer connection between the wheel and the fork. Apparently for better steering.
Have you guys ever experienced that?
I would love to hear your opinion.
To fix your wheel, they provide a Maxle Stealth, and you see the parameters over there, this is provided with the fork by default.
And that's all there is to know about the air spring.
As you move to the right leg, this is where your damper is.
And these forks come with the latest iteration of it, the Charger 2.1.
Charger damper was amazing and you can see an old Charger RLC.
They've had Charger 2.0 at some point but this 2.1 is the latest.
It is highly tunable and the compression gives me 18 clicks of adjustment over here.
Also, the Ultimate will give you high speed compression using a knob very similar to what we have here on the Charger.
However the cheaper Select version of the fork comes with a Charger damper
which I don't see it as a big problem since I like this damper quite a bit.
Rockshox also makes this 2.1 damper available as an upgrade kit for the older forks, and I think that's pretty cool.
The valve tuning on this new damper is to minimize hand fatigue and in order to do that they had to minimize friction overall.
So on the Ultimate and Select Plus you have new SKF wiper seals.
Also they've moved to using Maxima Plush oil so when you hear that think about the damper, or internals on the damper.
The lowers of these forks still use the good old Rockshox 0W-30 oil,
so if you have some leftover is good to use for lower leg service.
And with the sag gradients gone from the right leg the only thing worth mentioning here is the rebound
and you see their usual graphic telling you how to speed up or slow down the rebound on your fork.
You have a big solid knob with 19 clicks of adjustment, counter clockwise to speed up the fork, and clockwise to slow down the rebound.
Fork only comes with a tapered steerer, so 1 1/2" to 1 1/8" and mine was cut slightly so I put a piece on the scale.
And that is 1820 grams.
And with the Maxle Stealth axle, here is your 1861 grams, pretty much what Rockshox specs for the PIKE.
Select Plus forks are usually hard to find, but if you do find one, they are one knob away from the Ultimate without the price tag.
With this being the 2020 fork I'm probably gonna upgrade the air spring to the 2021 internals,
mostly because I wanted to make this a 150 mm fork for my Commencal META that I started building not too long ago.
Are you guys interested in the new Rockshox forks,
their new Charger 2.1 damper or the new DebonAir air spring?
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
If you have any questions don't forget to ask.
If you found this useful don't forget to like, subscribe, keep an eye on social media,
and until next time, hope to see you folks on the trails.
Cheers guys, cheers!