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so I did a good bit of manual URL scouring on the fox service site in the days I was waiting for mine to arrive, but didn't find anything more than the user manual. Once it showed up I just gave fox a call and asked them about manuals, they said there aren't going to be full service manuals for likely 3-6 months. Their reasoning was any time they release a new product like this, they want to be doing any immediate work needed themselves, so that they can know if anything is going on with the forks. I understand where they're coming from, I find it hard to imagine anyone will be hitting that 125hr service interval multiple times in a few months, and while I work at a shop that does all our suspension work in house and would definitely be annoyed to have to ship stuff into fox just because they say so, I recognize fox has invaluable information to gain from seeing what real person, real world use does to a product at scale. All that said, I'm gonna go ahead and post the basic service info the fox guy was willing to share with me and really hope fox doesn't mind.
I already pulled mine apart and found everything seemed fine, no excess grease in the airspring, adequate bath oil on both sides. We have bushing burnishing tools at my shop, and seeing Diaz's posts about his I may pull mine apart again and take a more thorough look at it, but it's a rather seldomly performed service so I'm not quite a wizard at it. I do find myself in the fortuitous position of also having an Intend to compare it to, though for all my shiny toys I'm not the most distinguishing reviewer of fine details, I'll see if I can find anyone to loan them to who may be able to construct some useful analysis...
Final note I just remembered, on the inside line Robot mentioned talking to a fox tech about the design process and the tech saying they swapped the airspring and damper on their personal fork to avoid getting airspring oil on their rotor, but he was unsure if that entailed pressing the stanchions into the dropouts swapped, or if anyone could do this swap themselves. I can confirm than both lower legs appear to use the same stanchion, both have a negative transfer dimple, as well as circlip seats for the airspring, and the csu topcaps are fully removable. I didn't end up doing the swap on my fork, but it really looks to be a trivial task once you're already doing a service.
I have no idea if this mudguard is made by Fox and is the one they were mentioning would come or not, but here's a motostyle mudguard for the Podium at least:
For some reason it won't start the video at the selected time, but the mudguard is shown at 8:40 in this video.
The part about fox wanting to see forks themselves in the early stages of a product launch is actually legitimate - it can be a real issue when people try to sort problems themselves since they are often misdiagnosed or not even reported back to the manufacturer at all. For example, when a shop opens up a fork that's only a few rides old and finds no oil , they probably think it just wasn't filled at the factory when it was actually sucked in to the damper. If they just add more oil, it just increases the problem and maybe causes damper failure before the manufacturer is even fully aware of it. When I was working with marzocchi it was super common and massively delayed things that could have been fixed if it was known about earlier. So while its a huge pain to send back a brand new fork, it does help the customer and everyone else in the long ryn
Seems like you could make it way shorter in the front and get most of the benefits. All the little plastic zip tie on fenders are super short and just off the back. They are mounted much closer to the tire though.
Yeah, I don't know if the Podium fender works well or not (I'm certainly curious), but I'm guessing because it's so much farther away from the tire than a normal Marsh Guard-style fender, Fox is expecting the mud and water to spray a lot further up and out front before getting trapped, like this:
Yeah you absolutely need that front length for that style of guard. I cut the front of the guard off my moto at one point because I fucked it in a fence and didn't want to have nothing until the new one turned up. Had about 5-6 inches of length in front of the fork and it was absolutely terrible.
A second binding Podium has hit Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMjL7O2S-5t/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
People who routinely service forks have seen this from Fox for years now. Floating axle or not, Fox finds a way to make the fork bind. Not surprising it has carried on to the Podium.
All the time and money spent developing an air spring with a "floating piston" only to have the chassis bind more than the air spring ever could, pretty sad.
Hey @TEAMROBOT do you still have your podium? How annoying would it be for you to try to replicate this? Schroeder and I were talking about this and he mentioned that the fork is probably constantly going in and out of alignment on the trail and questioned how much it even matters that the fork is starting in perfect alignment when there's no load. My thinking is that if your fork does bind like this but still feels as good as you say, then he's probably right.
The fork may flex during use, but if it is binding that bad unloaded it will have a negative impact on performance.
I found the PUSH 9.1 to have a tight bushing fit initially, and as such it had more feedback through the hands and was difficult to get into the last 30mm of travel. After the bushing fit was corrected, performance was noticeably improved. With all the same settings on the same trails the fork now gets within 10mm of bottom and is much better on the hands.
It would be very interesting to see if any of the Fox Podium media and "influencer" forks are like the one above.
I would be willing to check the Vital fork and provide a lower leg service with fresh seals as well. 👍
Why do Bicycle consumers continue to Support Rubbish brands/products at high cost?
Is cycling a marketing Show?
Are 'richer' older riders ruining it, especially with ebikes?
are fanboy's of old the real problem?
For pure example: Shimano Release Sram tech(Original AXS) from 2019 and the fanboys lap it up like the best thing ever... is this apple marketing at it's finest?
Side note: why are Media Products(Products given to media) basically in perfectly acceptable condition? but we cant buy that.
Can people redo that drop out test by tightening the pinch bolts incrementally instead of torquing one down completely before doing the other? I know the manual doesn't say that but its the proper way to tighten any pinch bolt system
Can we please get a slo speed video of front tire spray at multiple levels of fork travel on a cut vs normal front fender. Bonus points for video of Robot taking mud splatter to the face.
I'm sure curious how the podium compares to something like an avalanche hybrid coil zeb, or something similar.
I have had an avy hybrid on the same bike as an rxf38m2, zeb 3.1 acs3, and fox 38 x2/secus. It was no contest, the avy hybrid was significantly better in every way. Wonder if the robot has rode anything like that ?
I'll be testing a Vorsprung Smashpot alongside an MRP Lift damper in a Zeb shortly, so I think that should be a good point of comparison. I'm also very curious.
I've never ridden any Avalanche product, but 95% of people who do seem to swear by them. I've also heard Craig is a bit of a character.
When should we be expecting the smashpot review?
That depends, how much do you value not having to deal with Avalanche?
Looking forward to that, thanks !
Ah, Craig isn’t that bad.
He is just a dude that’s lived through 30 years of marketing “experts”. It’d be hard not to become a little salty.
It’s one of the reasons I’m asking questions here about the podiums. Historically robot is pretty spot on with his reviews in my opinion.
The glowing reviews of the podiums that are out and about right now kind of mirror the fox 38 grip 2 when it was first released. And the grip 2 really kind of sucked, comparatively. So difficult to separate marketing from fact in the mtb space.
I wouldn't hold your breath. I'm just getting on the Secus this week, then the Smashpot after that, and I like to ride something for a bit before rendering judgement.
Welp, you can probably tell by my clickbait thumbnail alone, but I'm not a fan of the Podium thus far. TL;DR (or TL;DW), its different, but its not better. I also have durability issues that have occurred on two different Podiums and the performance is meh. Not bad, but certainly not worth the money.
Also, I think now is a good time for me to eat crow and go "yeah, I think the media guys did get something a little different".
Hey Jeff, loved your thoughts here. Bummer that you got not one but two duds with leaking seals that wrecked your brake pads. I'd be pissed! But I think you did a great job of enumerating the different aspects of your experience on the fork, and I especially liked the back to back run comparison with the 38 and your "thought experiment." It sounds like your experience on the fork (when it was working) has been very different than mine, but that's why I'm glad these are getting out in the wild and more people are riding them, so we can get a wider perspective. I love mine, but I'm not everybody.
I'll also be curious to hear your longer term thoughts once you get it back from warranty. A few unrelated thoughts after watching your video:
1. I am 100% going to switch the spring and damper sides when I eventually do a lowers service. I get a healthy amount of oil spray every time I mess with air pressure, and that sucks. I use a piece of paper or cardboard as a shield between my caliper and rotor, but still, that's whack.
2. Have you had a proper bottom out yet? I started riding different places and have had to add volume reducers back in, because I was getting a violent metal on metal clunk at full bottom. I had a ride in Oregon where I bottomed out maybe 6 times, and that's with 105 psi in the chamber, which is a lot more than recommended for my 194 pound self.
3. Are you measuring clicks from open or closed? I'm sure you're measuring from closed because you didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday, but it seems like your HSR is really closed. I run my rebound a lot more open to keep the fork up in the travel, and I've had a lot of fun running the Podium with the HSR more open, especially on rough steep chop. YMMV
4. Lastly, you are 100% academically correct that dual crown forks are the only logical answer for very long travel enduro bikes and heavy ebikes with 29" front wheels. No argument, and if we could just bite the bullet and put a Boxxer or 38 dual crown on the front of our 165mm+ rear travel bikes we'd all be better for it. But at this point the market doesn't want that, and I think the Podium comes real close. But you're still right that a dual crown fork would be better in almost every way.
Very curious as to what Fox comes back to you with on the second fork.
Answers:
-All clickers from full closed.
-Since the recording, I have opened HSR and LSR ~3 clicks each. Usually I like a more lively setup, but I ended up pretty far in because the fork was feeling a bit unsettled in really rough terrain (like it was skipping around). Mind you, the trails around here aren't crazy steep, but are very blown out right now. I had feelings at times that the fork was not "settled", hence my attempt at fixing it with more rebound. As you all can probably tell, I have not found a setup I love.
-I have bottomed the fork, but it was a total fuck up on my behalf. In "normal riding conditions" I'm not bottoming
Thx for all the thoughts!
Can we all start pressuring manufacturers for dual crown approval on bikes with 160mm+ of travel?
Maybe we can get TEAMROBOT to start listing lack of dual crown compatibility as a negative on enduro bike reviews? 😉
I wonder if your left glove's velcro being undone and flaping in the wind is any indication of the amount of oil that spayed out of the air spring side when you adjusted your air pressure. I'd be curious to see if the right side does it after you switch the damper/air spring assemblies in the legs.
Oh wait, then the right side was undone too. Was that before or after switching damper/air spring? Then, when on the 38, both sides came undone.
So many questions left without answers!
As a guy who has had to send probably 75% of my shocks and forks for warranty service in the last 5 years. I've sent back a Cane Creek Helm MK1 once for a broken damper, two DVO Diamond D2 twice (bad bushings twice, broken spring seat), a DVO Jade shock 3 times (leaking, then no damping, then leaking again), Ohlins TTX2 air (bad factory bleed) and RXF38m.2 (sending it tomorrow after 15 hrs of riding for weird clunks and noises inside) I can relate to your experience! Being unlucky with this, I had purchased a backup RXF38 when they were 40% off. That's my technique to survive fork warranties : always have a backup fork and crown race in stock just in case.
BTW very interesting review, thanks for sharing!
Interesting. Thanks for the details.
I've settled on a lot of air pressure (well above recommendations for my weight), as few tokens as possible, a lot of compression, and very little rebound damping. This makes the fork feel like it's riding high in the travel, without being harsh on impacts. Slowing down rebound made the fork feel harsher for me than adding air or compression, although I've definitely found "too much" compression and air pressure.
Worth noting that my setup ended up being pretty similar to what I run on all my forks, which is worth mentioning. It's not like I had to do anything crazy, and the longer I tested it the more I gravitated away from the recommended settings and back to what I'd normally run on anything.
on the point 4...
my best fork to date is an Infinity EN.. dual crown enduro.. with it's flimsy 35mm stanchions still super stiff.. got it last july (2024)... serviced it a month ago...it was flawless..continues to be..
Excellent video Jeff. Sounds like people were right to be skeptical upon release after the last few years of questionable QC from Fox. I would be pretty heartbroken to drop two racks and have the experience you’ve had so far. I need another brave and competent YouTuber to take the same chance on an Infinity EN or Vaia next
This type of set up peaked my interest, mainly since I feel like I'm moving the same way with my 38 with a X2. Do you find yourself running any tokens at all then? How much (as a percentage) would you say you're running over recommended pressure.
With a year+ of damper forward setups being available with the improvements with the Charger and the Grip dampers, wonder what people are starting to land on.
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