Externally no visual changes...A question everyone wonders is “what will Push do to my fork?” Well the nice thing is that right off the get-go, Push gets to work with a solid chassis. Out of the box, the Reba, Revelation and Pike are pretty solid forks – but there is always room for tailoring the forks performance to the riders needs!
...it's inside that the magic happensFirst thing that goes into the fork is the Push “Vault” damper seal housing. Machined from 6061-T6 Aluminum, the Vault seal housing features an upgraded Urethane Rod Seal as well as an exclusive dual guide bushing design. Urethane seals offer better impact, abrasion and tear resistance, while the upper and lower bushings prevent any damper rod binding even under the heaviest of braking bumps.
With the Factory Fork System they replace the RockShox single flow rebound circuit with a sophisticated multi-stage circuit. The rebound characteristic is completely transformed and is pre-tuned to the rider’s weight. The first thing you’ll probably notice is that the rebound feels slow, even with no rebound damping. That’s okay because this intricate circuit is frequency dependant – therefore the fork’s rebound might feel slow just pushing on it in the parking lot, but once you get going on the trail, that’s where you can feel the difference.
In simple terms – “you get what you put into it”. The faster/harder you ride, the faster the rebound will be. The slower you ride, the slower the rebound will be. Like I said, you need to ride the fork to understand. Darren didn’t give me any explanation before sending me the test fork – he simply said “ride it and let me know what you think!”
The first thing I mentioned to Darren after riding the fork is “Initially the fork’s rebound felt pretty slow, but once I got on the trail, the fork worked really well and was tracking beautifully through corners!” Darren knew I was going to mention the slow initial rebound and that’s his main concern since most people are used to fork with a broad range of rebound damping.
When fork manufactures design forks – they need to build them for the masses. By that I mean the fork has to work well for the 130lbs rider and also for the 200+ lbs rider. Push takes those forks and fine tunes them based on the spring rate the rider will be running. A multi-stage rebound circuit will give you more stability as the fork’s rebound will adjust to the way you ride.
For the initial test I decided to mount the fork to my Chromag hard tail. In some rough sections I found myself wanting to go faster, but the back end didn’t want to keep up! Like mentioned previously, the fork worked very well. Both under hard braking and over rough choppy terrain, the fork felt really controlled. First impressions were good.
I was really looking forward to trying one on a full suspension bike and I got a chance to do that this past weekend. I mounted the fork on my Stumpjumper FSR and took her out for a rip! The fork worked very well and although the fork felt slow in the parking lot, not once did I feel there was too much rebound! Typically if the rebound on your fork is too fast, the bike will drift wide or wash. If the rebound is too slow, the bike will tuck under you and you’ll feel like the front end is packing. I felt like the fork was really balanced in that respect.
These are all initial impressions. I need to spend a bit more time on the fork and ride different terrain to get a better idea of the long term performance and durability.
Thanks to Darren and all the fine folks at
Push Industries for giving me the opportunity to ride the first production PIKE Factory Fork System that they’ve built – even before the product was announced. Yes I feel special!
WWW.PUSHINDUSTRIES.COM
Solo ride on the Push Pike
