as i was saying, i was looking for a bit more comfort and speed on the downhill parts of our rides and decided to replace the stock monarch that came on the bike with a rock shox vivid air.
swapping the shocks was a pretty simple affair; the vivid is a straight drop in. as you can see the vivid (top) is a significantly more substantial part. not so much in terms of weight but definitely when it comes to air volume.
when i rode it on wednesday night i was a bit disappointed: the shock felt harsh and the bike felt like it was stuttering through the rougher sections. not a big deal: with a shock as configurable as this one it’s normal to get it wrong first.
i also wanted to replace the shock bushings and when i checked bushings in the vivid i immediately found another reason to switch them out: the bushings were way too tight and did not rotate properly.
good thing i had just ordered a bushing service tool. not so good that it only worked with standard bushings, not the needle bearings i was planning to swap over from the monarch.
the first part was simple: pressing the standard bushing out of the vivid. i had to get a bit creative with the needle rollers: i turned the blue driver (slightly smaller than the inner diameter of the eye) around and used the inner part of the needle bearing as a guide to line up the outer. i also needed a longer threaded rod but that was a case of $2 at the local hardware store.
so now i got needle rollers in the vivid, i turned the rebound damping down a few notches and finally upped the air pressure in the spring to run the recommended 30% sag. let’s see how we go on the next test ride.
update 30 Oct: yep, much better. the shock is not harsh at all, in fact it appears to be showing up the forks now and i had to speed up rebound to match. very very good performance indeed.