Marzocchi – 2015 Preview Day at Aston Hill
We were lucky enough to have access to the expertise of Marzocchi recently, and spent a wet and wild day at Aston Hill dialling in some team bikes and sampling some 2015 products.
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With the Enduro World Series followed by the Fort William world cup, Great Britain is firmly in the global mountain bike scene’s sights at the moment with many big teams and big names kicking about the countryside. One such set-up is the enormous Marzocchi truck. With a fully equipped suspension servicing workshop, as well as their EWS/WC technician Pedro, on hand for the day we were invited to get some of the team’s downhill bikes dialled in for the season. As well as getting set up for 2014, we were lucky enough to spend some time riding on some 2015 prototype forks.
Suspension Tune-Up
Pedro is Marzocchi’s resident suspension technician and spends a considerable portion of his year living and working in this enormous truck servicing and tuning both push bike and motorcycle forks and shocks – aided by a big fridge of Red-Bull of course! First on the menu was to get DH racer Ant Jones up and running with the Moto CR2 rear shock, as well as giving his 380 forks a once over. Pedro set to work stripping the fork back before tweaking pretty much everything inside them to make sure they were working at their optimum. The 380 C2R2 is a highly adjustable fork, with high and low speed compression handled by external adjusters as well as low speed rebound adjustment and an internal shim stack to tune the high speed rebound. Nickel coated stantions and SKF seals keep friction to a minimum and help the fork to operate exactly as it should.
With talent for asking just a few questions and coming out with a perfect set-up, his international pedigree shone through. Out on the trail the effects were obvious and immediate. Despite the dreadful weather and resulting conditions (Aston Hill is made of polished chalk covered in a thin sheen of well lubricated clay!) Ant could not shut up about how good his bike was feeling – and it showed in his riding – flat out! “I used to think this fine tuning was all a bit BS” and “Should I just hit that corner REALLY hard and see what happens?” are two quotes that sum up riding with a newly tuned Ant. He will run us through the CR2 Moto Shock that he’s running in more detail later.
2015 CR350 Forks
Myself and Joel also spent some time aboard the 2015 CR350 fork. With “Enduro” fast becoming the latest thing to sell bikes, and the 275 wheelsize becoming more than common-place for bikes that are ridden up hill and down again, this branch of the fork market is probably the most hotly contested. The 350 series aims to tackle this head on, and comes in where the (excellent) 55 currently sits. Coming in at around 1900g for this air sprung fork, weight has been shaved wherever possible. The same smooth arch not only looks slick and won’t catch mud, but also shaves weight without compromising stiffness. The front axle is now a 15mm bolt through, again bringing a loss of weight without a loss of stiffness.
The 350 makes use of the same Dynamic Bleed Cartridge system found in the 380 which hits the middle ground between open bath and closed cartridge systems. Essentially the oil can enter the lower of the cartridge through the bottom via a one-way valve (left of the picture below) and as pressure builds up, it is allowed to recycle out of a port at the top (right of the picture below).
We were riding the mid-ranged 350 CR which featured both low-speed compression damping and rebound adjust externally. The top-end fork (350 NCR) also features a lock-out that puts a platform into the damping, and this can be paired with a remote for mid-stage changes. The NCR features the same nickel coating of the top-end 380, while the CR (and the lower spec’d R) feature a superb looking gold coating – all of which are designed to work with the seals to reduce friction.
So to the proof of the pudding – the riding. From the word go, the 350CR felt superb, really stiff in the steering but with a really active damping feel. It took Joel (who is approximately 1000x faster than me) a couple of runs to get dialled into the feel of the fork. The damper is set, out of the box, so that the high speed compression (to tackle the roots of Aston Hill) were super active and always ready to take on the next impact without packing down. After the first run we headed back and chatted to Pedro, who likened the experience to riding whoops on an MX bike. To tackle the smaller high speed hits the suspension is always working and recovering in the top portion of the travel which prevents the suspension from “packing down” (where the fork cannot recover each hit fast enough and effectively runs out of travel). Pedro’s advice – “go again, go faster and don’t touch the brakes, soon you will only be steering, the fork will be doing all of the work” and he mimed holding on with only one finger on each hand…
The fork was a real treat to ride, and once we had our heads round just what this suspension could do, neither of us wanted to give it back!
Joel’s Enduro Race bike was also running a custom tuned ROCO LO shock, again he will give us a detailed run through of that as the season goes on.
We all owe Pedro and Stefano from Marzocchi and Dan from Windwave a big thank you for helping us out for the day, and making us feel so welcome. We can’t wait to get a set of 350s bolted on to a long term bike and give them some beans!
Words and Pictures – Tom Laws
Additional Photo – Joel Chidley