it appears my beloved vivid air has not survived the scheduled rebuild. let me explain (as far as i can): modern mountain bike suspension components are extremely sophisticated and delicate. to function as well as they should they need to be rebuilt on a regular basis. this means chaining the oil and various o-rings, x-rings, wipers and so forth – and the vivid air has lots of all of the above.
since i love my vivid air i handed it over to our local suspension genius who has been looking after our bike suspension for a while with great success. imagine how i felt when he called me to say the vivid was fubar (a technical term meaning it can’t be repaired).
ok that is not the vivid (may it rest in peace) but it’s predecessor, the monarch, which now resides on nat’s bike. below a comparison showing the monarch and the vivid – easy to see how much more complex the vivid is.
whatever the reason for the old vivd’s demise our friend managed to score me another vivid, this time a coil shock. i have been thinking about getting a coil shock for a while; apparently the nomad loves coil shocks and works really well with those. something about the nomad’s progressive suspension rate and the shock’s linear spring rate really hitting it off.
i’ll find out soon, the shock is now mounted on my bike.
so if the coil is such a great thing why don’t all bikes run coil springs? well, there is a penalty, in this case half a kilo. yes, that is a lot. no amount of titanium and carbon fibre will counter that.
let’s see if it’s worth it. i hope so.