Is an $1100 coil shock really worth it? High Low Ep 5

three hundred dollar air shock first an eleven hundred dollar coil shock does expensive equal better [Music] first up is ripping off the stock sr suntor air shock from our two identical polygon cisco d5s this shock does not have a rebound adjustment and is very very bouncy and now that we have a blank slate on my low bike i'm installing a new rockshox monarch plus rc3 my favorite shock that i've ever used the debonair can and extra oil reservoir made for a really plush ride and it always kept the wheel firmly planted on the ground but these do have a big history of failing and needing to be completely rebuilt i hope this one works out for my high bike since i have an unlimited budget i'm installing an ext storia v3 coil shock another premium italian part and unfortunately evan made me buy this used so it's not even custom tuned for this polygon oh the excuses are starting already but that coal shock is way heavier almost a full pound i don't care about weight i only time the downhills first up is installing dew bushings with my eyelet bushing tool we're also going to be reusing the stock hardware [Music] next the shocks are installed to the right torque making this a very easy job [Music] so now the shocks are installed but now i wonder how do i even set up the coil shock with an air shock all i need is a shock pump and i can set the sag to whatever i want in just a few minutes the ext coil shock leaves all sorts of questions like what spring rate do i use how much preload how do i measure sag should i change out the spring and where do i even begin with high and low speed compression but now i think i have it tuned right after using the spring rate calculator and i use the bump stop as a sag indicator so it should be at a pretty good base setting but that was way more complicated and for all that work the extra cost and the extra weight is it really going to be that much better on the trail the bikes are ready to go and the high bike now weighs 33.8 pounds and the total project cost so far is a whopping fifty five hundred dollars the low bike now weighs thirty three point six pounds and so far has cost two thousand three hundred and sixty bucks i can't wait to see how they stack up against each other but it's time for another clean for green and this is my subscriber alec and if he can do this climb in one minute i'll give him ten dollars all right go for it while he's doing that i'm gonna tell you about this video's sponsor skillshare skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes it's a perfect place to start learning a new skill like productivity cooking and making youtube videos skillshare has a massive library of online learning so pretty much anyone can find classes that will match their goals and interests right now i'm learning spanish to help me at my day job as a nurse it's something that i've been putting off for way too long there's so many different topics on skillshare there's definitely a class that you'd be interested in and if you're curious and love learning like i do you should definitely check it out oh he's almost there and the first thousand people to use my link in the description or my code evansmtb saga will get a one month free trial of skillshare let's see how's alec doing oh he made it i owe him 10 and you owe me a like chad and i are taking both bikes on the saga test loop to see if the shocks give us any time improvements on the first short descent it was actually the low bikes monarch shock that felt way better and more playful it felt snappy and light which led to getting a pr on the segment beating the high bike by an entire second oh come on that was basically a fire road on the more gnarly downhill the ext shot kept being firmly planted on the ground and choosing lines and weaving between rocks became effortless but those tests were not enough i just hiked up 25 000 feet to the top of south mountain but what i'm going to do is take both shocks and put them on the high bike to get some better baseline tests let's get started on the climb up surprisingly the ext shock felt like it had less pedal bob because it felt stiffer and had great traction up the technical climb the rockshox monarch plus had a normal amount of pedal bob and lacked behind the coil shock when it came to rear wheel attraction on the tech climbs but still had predictable plushness despite the shock upgrades hitting this drop to flat still didn't feel great and the biggest difference i could feel is just doing it with better form [Music] but then on the rough rocky downhill section i finally felt a huge difference i got through the rock garden just fine with the rock shocks and had no issues but on the coil shock the faster i went the better it handled i felt like i was plowing downhill and i could hold a straight line for much longer so after the testing the coil shock is definitely better on that last long downhill the air shock was experiencing fade and that's when the oil in the shock heats up making the shock not work as well coil shocks don't really get that which is a huge benefit of using a coil but bro i have some bad news this coil shock is leaking oil are you kidding this is all your fault for making me buy used to save money man that's a bummer if the coil shock is leaking oil that means it has air inside of it so it may not have been in peak condition for testing but we're going to send it off to be rebuilt but what do you expect me to use here you can use this fox shock ooh kashima so what can we learn from all this well cool shocks are super hard to set up and there's not a lot of information on how to do it even though the coil shock was better i don't think it's worth the hassle and eight hundred dollars more air shocks are way more diy mechanic friendly you just pump up more air another takeaway is buying used parts doesn't always work out it can be risky and you might run into a dishonest person and end up getting a leaking shock or ripped off altogether but now that both bikes have upgraded suspension i expected them to feel way more plush than they are and i think that's because of the super heavy stock wheel set and we now have channel membership so you can get sneak previews on future builds what is that how much did you spend

Channel: Evans MTB Saga

Views: 435,535

Keywords: mtb, mountain bike, bikes, mountain bike upgrades

Id: JgbaGtZG2ts

Length: 7min 31sec (451 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 12 2022