Saturday, 14 January 2017

Öhlins RXF 36 29er fork review

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The RXF 36 is the second mountain bike fork from motorsport legends Öhlins. Like its little brother, the RXF 34, it uses a one-piece crown and steerer that doubles as a crown race.

This design is claimed to boost stiffness and reduce weight, but requires a specific lower headset bearing if you don’t have a Specialized bike. The 51mm offset is pretty much standard for a 29er fork, though we’ve found some big-wheelers handle better with the 46mm offset found on the RXF 34.

Whether we were stabbing at the brakes or smashing into rocks, the Öhlins felt noticeably stiffer than the Fox

A ‘ramp-up chamber’ within the air spring lets you control the end-stroke progression without using volume spacers. Öhlins’ recommended pressures for our 85kg tester (115psi in the main spring, 160psi in the ramp-up chamber) gave 15 percent sag — about right for harder riders — but left us bottoming the fork out far too easily.

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We incrementally increased the ramp-up pressure to 225psi, where the bottom-out force was spot-on. Once we had the settings dialled, we did some back-to-back testing against a class benchmark, the Fox 36 Float RC2.

Whether we were stabbing at the brakes or smashing into rocks, the Öhlins felt noticeably stiffer than the Fox. Over kerb-sized bumps it glided through its travel, with less distracting backwards flex. At 2,057g with a 210mm steerer, it’s only around 20g heavier too, so that unusual crown-steerer design seems to work.

You can read more at BikeRadar.com



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