I've had two blue tune Fox 38 V1 MRP Lift dampers fail. The first was DOA. It leaked oil when the bike was turned upside down, and hissed air and oil out of the dial on compression, with a stiff bind when turning the compression dial more than four clicks out. MRP sent me a new one without any hassle.
It felt much better than the stock 22 Grip2 VVC damper, but the second failed after a couple of months. The shims and piston aren't held against a shoulder on the rod by the piston nut. There's a circlip that stops them moving up the shaft instead, and the scoring on the shaft at the gap in the circlip looked like the circlip hadn't ever really been secure enough, and had been pushed up past the groove for the circlip on the shaft when the damper failed with a total loss of compression damping. Also, when I pulled it apart to see what was wrong, I found that turning the LSC dial didn't move the flat ended needle to open the low speed ports on it, it was stuck fully closed. It's possible it never worked, as I only moved one click in from halfway out and then left it. Also, the nut that secures the piston was loose and had almost unthreaded itself. I was pretty much over them at this stage, so didn't bother to sort the failure out.
Months later, out of curiosity I bought a V2 compression assembly after the release and replaced one of the failed V1 assemblies. It uses a tapered needle down at the bolt face rather than the flat end of the rod up at the ports to close the low speed bleed, the piston is different and uses more shims in the stack, but seems to still have the same weaknesses in construction/design the V1 had. The needle seemed to move through it's full range before installation, so that was encouraging, but I've been riding a shockcraft tuned charger 2.1 Zeb with a smashpot so haven't put that fork back on that bike.
Still have a 26 Lyric with an Avalanche damper in it. That was an eye opener for how far ahead of a stock damper it was at the time. The NSR dorado on another bike has been an eye opener too. I'd probably go for the NSR Fast damper for a Zeb given how happy the people I know who have them have been.
