Rockshox fork volume spacers
- Thread starter SummitFever
- Start date
The Duckmeister
Has a juicy midrange
Solo has nothing to do with it. The negative spring, whether it's a self-equalised solo air, a fully separate chamber (dual air) or a coil only serves to give the very top stroke a bit of a push. Once you get a short way into the stroke the negative is basically pulled into a vacuum, or if a coil, simply just being a few extra grams of dead weight. Tokens give the fork better tuneability for a wide range of riders, in a way that just throwing air at it can't do, because they alter the compression ratio of the whole stroke.
SummitFever
Eats Squid
Sadly no Duckmeister. The ability to change the ratio between the positive and negative piston (as well as the relative volumes using different length air piston rods) provides a level of tune ability that you can never really achieve with solo air and any number of tokens. The crappiness of solo air is what led to the development of various band-aid solutions like volume modifying piston heads (luftcappe, debonair etc.) and the dynamic volume reducers (MRP).
Also, the negative piston will never pull a vacuum unless you start with no pressure in the air piston. Sure, its pressure will reduce as you get deeper into the stroke (thereby reducing its effect) but at no time will it be a negative pressure.
Do some Googling and you'll find various air spring calculators that will show you the relative effects of the pos and neg air spring through its travel. Try reducing the volume of the positive piston and see how tune-able that is compared to keeping the positive piston volume fixed and varying the pos/neg pressures independently.
Last edited: