Hey folks, after using the Reverb on my Trek for quite a while I decided that I
could use a new dropper, in this case is a Fall Line dropper from 9point8.
As you probably know they designed the technology that's being shared by Race Face
and Easton and it uses what's called the DropLoc so this is not a hydraulic
dropper post. My golden standard right now if I can call that is the KS Lev, 150mm
that installed on my Smuggler. You can see it here, it is really nice and smooth
really smooth, you can hear when it reaches the full extension. You can see
the Southpaw remote here and how it fits my hand perfectly I would say. But unless
you're just replacing like for like when it comes to selecting a dropper post
there is a few things that you have to do. First of all put out the pen and
paper, take a tape measure and start measuring. Just to make it easy to set up
your cockpit afterwards measure the tip of your saddle to the stem.
With your saddle at the climbing height start measuring from the rails all the way up
here to the collar, in my case is exactly 10 inches or 25.5 centimeters
and also, you have to know the overall length of your dropper. In my case is 375mm
so I know my dropper comes down to here with coupling coming down a little
bit more. I am interested in getting a 150mm but
a 150mm travel up here is also longer, so you need a longer
piece fitting into your frame. So my big dilemma in this case was: can I actually
fit my 440 millimeter in here and still have room for the cable coupling at the
bottom of the dropper post. Most of full suspension bikes will have this issue so
try and talk to the manufacturer or actually just try yourself
to measure how far down you can fit your seat post into the frame. So as I was
trying to decide if I take the gamble with the 440 mm or I just get a straight
replacement, 125 mm dropper, I remember that I knew Jack, one of
the owners of 9point8 since they sponsored the local race series. So here I am in y car driving
west of Toronto for about an hour, to Ancaster
that's where 9point8 is based out of. Not only that's he waited for me
with a 375 and a 440 dropper, he also helped me make the decision based on the
right fit and gave me a little tour of their operation. He gave me a lot of
details about how this dropper was built in how we're supposed to get the best
out of it so here are all the juicy details. I have posted a separate video
for the unboxing of the dropper as well as the details of the new Digit remote
and the installation of the actual remote. Cable provided is a 1.6 meters
long Jagwire Lex SL and here you can see the whole assembly that gets connected to
the bottom of the dropper post. The inner wire is just a normal steel cable,
I'm going to replace it with this Teflon cable. The two set screws that you see here
on the Quick Connect these are used for all the other remotes but not for the
Digit so for this particular installation take your 2 millimeter
Allen key, remove these two set screws and just discard them. So the 1.6 meter of
housing provided seems to be barely enough for what I need. And here it is routed nicely
through the frame. Little bit of slack here in case I over-rotate my handlebars.
So the three pieces installed here are your cable seal nut and if you pay attention there
is an o-ring in there just so it doesn't fall into the frame as you have it here.
Then you have your Quick Connect and the T-nut. T-nut has a thread in here, this
one gets threaded onto the housing. However before you do that you push it
into the Quick Connect and you thread it in now all the way in until it bottoms out.
Next I have to figure out the actual final length of the cable housing so I'm
going to screw this on to the dropper post. The trick here is, when you install
the Quick Connect onto the dropper you rotate the dropper.
When you install the cable seal nut onto the bottom of the dropper you rotate the
cable seal nut. By the way this is optional so if you're space constraint you
can actually install the dropper without this cable seal nut. So now with those
good measurements that I made initially remember, from the saddle rail down to
the collar, inserted my dropper all the way and now I'm ready to actually cut my
housing. Measure once, twice, three times before I cut it. Done and use the
supplied cable ferrule just to finish it. Next thing to do is to remove your
dropper because now you have the cable jacket length.
Feed the cable through the Quick Connect end it goes through the
middle of that T-nut. Reinstall the dropper, remember Quick Connect stays in place you just rotate the dropper.
place you just rotate the dropper snug and then cable seal nut finally before
you feed your cable through, just use a 2.5 mm to unscrew this cable set screw a
little bit, just make room for your inner cable and then take this barrel adjuster.
So turn it clockwise all the way in and then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 turns out. Fit the cable
through and as you push it through the barrel then you push it here into the lever.
Last thing, put a bit of tension onto your cable. Use the same 2.5 millimeter hex and
just tighten your cable here.
My seatpost is up right now, seatpost down
make sure that we have a bit of play as well not that much play at the bottom,
perfect! Last thing to do, finally trim the inner cable and use
one of the fancy colored cable ends that you have in your toolbox.
The only sealed chamber in this dropper post is an air spring , Schrader valve,
20 to 40 psis. It comes with about 30 I think. What it does it just helps your
dropper to lift up when you release the brake. The dropper head is quite
innovative, this is the inline so zero offset. They have another one with offset
I think it is 25 mm offset. The innovative part is that it has two screws here so
if you want to adjust to tilt on your saddle fore/ aft, you use these two screws,
5Nm max torque. To actually keep the saddle in place you have the
side screws and again it's a 4 mm Allen key again.
8 to 12 Nm torque. All the hardware on this dropper's head is titanium coated so
I asked them and they told me that there was no ant anti-seize or grease needed
for any of their bolts as long as you torque them properly. I'll put a bit of
grease on my saddle rails and if you want to adjust the pressure here, you
don't have to actually touch the fore aft adjustment of your saddle. I have to
do just loosen up one side, remove one other side, lift up the saddle just like
you see me doing it now and you are good to go. So I thought that was pretty cool.
So the way you use this, as it gets tighter, see, 12.
I think I'm getting close to it
This is good enough if you don't have a torque key at home.
So guess I've seen the install, not a big deal. Operation is really smooth, you
can hear a little bit of a top out bumper.
One last thing that you might have to do is
Either with the saddle raised like this or sitting on the
saddle, to the trailhead. What you might have to do is what's called a brake reset.
The symptoms that you will see are that the dropper doesn't engage or has a
little bit of sag. To do it, hold down the lever for 10 seconds
and that's pretty much it. All you're doing is equalizing the pressure inside of the
Droploc, the brake itself. And this can be needed when you let it sit for a
long time unused or when you have huge temperature swings. Think about taking
your bike out of the house and riding it in winter.
The side to side movement
here is kept to a minimum and you see it up or down is very, a tiny bit. It's a
bit less than what I had on other droppers mostly because the way they
designed the keys that are here on the lower part of the dropper are spring
activated and the other pretty interesting thing about that one is that
they adjust for wear. Just like many other droppers this is going to need some sort
of a maintenance here for the upper bushing and wiper seal. How do you know
when that's needed? When your dropper starts to extend slower with no other
changes to the dropper itself you know that it's time to perform that.
Showed you guys that I bought this, this is called the P10 L grease. This grease
what's specific about it is the fact that it's not necessarily made to be
very greasy if you want. This is lithium base with a lot of additives just to be
a bit more clingy to the surfaces. As I was thinking about a conclusion for my
video I realized that I love this feature the most, the fact that I can
lift the bike off the saddle, you can handle it pretty much like a bike with
no dropper post. That's because the Droploc, the mechanical brake in here in the
upper tube only locks this shaft in place so it doesn't matter if you
push on it or pull on it, you won't cause any damage there's no IFP, there
is no oil involved. So all good and well but I discovered my list of wants before
I even decided on the 9point8 dropper. And the first thing was to make sure that is
a reliable and easy to maintain dropper. These guys from 9point8 are
testing their droppers to a 100,000 actuations, a RockShox Reverb B1 is tested to about 15k.
Easy to maintain, you only have the seals
for the air spring and that's pretty much it. There's videos online, you have
parts, easy to do I believe. Not too porky, talk about weights obviously and
better than Reverb and better 1x remote.
The whole 9point8 dropper installed is
60 grams heavier than the Reverb but I gained another inch of travel here to
get the saddle out of the way and I have a much better remote that actually
has good ergonomics and it fits me very well. Good local support - these guys have
built a reputation for support, for good support and they're local to me so
another thumbs up. Finally the four season performance and they do test it
down to minus 30 degrees Celsius. There'sno oil in it to get thicker so hopefully
everything is going to work just fine and remember you might need to perform
that break reset when you have temperature swings like that.
So yeah, what do I think about this dropper after riding it for a couple weeks?
Installation was easy, documentation is awesome you can see all kind of details
in here about the product.The remote became second nature, the dropper works
just fine so the fact that I don't think about it when I'm riding I guess it's a
good thing. One thing that I noticed is that is not as loud the KS Lev so I
have to trust it to be there. But all in all I'm very happy with this, it's been a
great experience for me from start to finish, buying it, installing it, and even
reviewing it I had a lot of fun. If you guys have questions let me know in the
comments below, I'll do my best to answerthem as usual, don't forget to keep an
eye on my channel, like the video and until next time,
hope to see you guys on the trails. Cheers!