its fairly good. I'm only going to use for this season because i don't have 500+ to spend on a new good coil shock. I run the boost valve at 120-140 psi and the main chamber at 220-240 psi. For whistler and stuff that has bigger hits i would up the main chamber psi to 260 or so.
Funny thing with air shocks is the 'parking lot test' always sucks, but once on the trail it's no different. My buddy has a DHX air on his Mongoose Blackdiamond triple but he won't let me do a 'full test' involving bigger hit style jumps/drops. So it ramps up pretty good at the end of the stroke? Kinda hard/really hard to bottom-out?
yea, you just have to be more precise when setting it up. I find that they are less forgiving than coils. He probably didn't let you test it out because it wasn't set up exactly for you.
Haha yeah he is much lighter than me, but I'm a more aggressive rider than he is and it's also an inside joke that I can't touch his bike and he never wants to ride mine.
I'm running a very nicely rebuilt manitou (leave company 'reputation' outta this ) it's just rebound, extra air resevior to pump up for bottom-out resistance, and a adjust to chance the volume size of the resevior. It's only got 1 rebound setting (no high/low) and after about 60% stroke it slows down, as if hitting a big lip so that it doesn't buck you if you get my drift, weird how it's like that.
yea, manitou was fairly good. I had a 5th element on this bike before my air shock. It had high and low, beginning and end stroke adjustment and all that but after i had to rebuild it twice i gave up. here is my bike with the 5th: http://www.pinkbike.com/photo/2868287/ I no longer had this bike anymore. I bike a cove shocker now.... same suspension set up as my orange had.