| Rock
Shox Reba Race with Pop-Lock
Four months ago I sold
my Fox F100 RL that came as standard on my Raleigh RDS
9.0 and bought a Rock Shox Reba. The main reason for
changing was that the Fox was very maintenance
intensive, and, having only one bike I can't afford to
be without my fork while it takes a trip to Cape Town
to get bushings sorted out. I decided on the Reba
because I heard that it required far less maintenance
and because they were real easy to get set up and
working.
Features and Facts Dual
Air:
The Reba has a Dual Air
chamber on the left leg and I never really knew what
it did, so here in average guy terms is how it works;
The positive chamber (on top) adds more compression to
the fork. i.e. it makes it harder to push it down. The
negative chamber (on the bottom) basically pulls the
fork down against the positive chamber. Seems pretty
dumb because the basically pull against each other,
but in reality this is a neat feature that allows you
to set how sensitive you would like the fork to be. It
is probably best explained in a simple example;
Lets say you are a race
snake that doesn't like any bob or for that matter any
real fork movement. What you could do is pump the
positive chamber real hard. (so that it is difficult
to compress the shock) and then not pump anything, or
very little into the negative chamber, (so there is
nothing pulling the fork down). The fork would then be
supper hard. Now, lets say that you discover that your
arms are feeling like you have had an awesome gym
workout, after a ride. All you do is add pressure to
the negative chamber, this effectively makes the shock
overcome the positive pressure easier and voila, the
shock is more sensitive to bumps but still pretty
resistant to pedaling bob.
I have mine set very
plush, I believe that the shock must work for you. I
have 110 psi in the positive and negative chamber. I
found after much playing around that matching them
makes for the plushest ride. The pressure that I ride
is nowhere near what they recommend on the fork. I
weigh 90kg and for that weight they suggest 140 psi,
but it is way to hard for me. Other people I know
riding the Rebas also have far lower pressures than
recommended, so don't stress about this.
Pop-Lock
This is the greatest
little lever since the flushing toilet! I use mine
constantly. When I want to get out the saddle on a
climb, I just lock it out and can pump as hard as I
want. The other good thing about this lockout is that
there is still 10-20mm of travel when locked, so the
ride is not so harsh. Also, Rock Shox has designed the
floodgate that can be set to blow off the lockout on a
big bump. On my old shock, I never used the lockout,
no I couldn't live without it!
Opinion
In short, I love this
fork! It is super stiff, it requires no maintenance (I
have now done over 300 hours of hassle free riding)
and it looks really good in the anodized black finish!
All the knobs and
adjusters are aluminum on the 2006 forks and this adds
a bit of class to the product. It does take a while to
find your personal sweet spot on the dual air, but it
is fun trying all the different setting and getting it
just right.
The biggest problem
with this fork is that I didn't buy the pimping world
cup version, with carbon fibre crown and steerer!
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