WE RIDE FOX LIVE VALVE
Fox Live Valve is said to bring automotive suspension technology to mountain bikes. We had Ryan Walsch trail test the system to see if it meets the hype.
Fox Live Valve brings technology from the high-end offroad motorsport market and takes it to mountain bikes – but how does a system that reacts faster than we can think work on the trail?
We had the chance to ride a Rocky Mountain Altitude with all the bells and whistles including the unicorn that is Fox Live Valve. After hearing about the product over a year ago and some sneak peek articles here was a bike in the flesh at AMB’s disposal for the day.
Sola Sport, who import Fox to Australia, brought along their secret squirrel software which can adjust the sensitivity and parameters of Live Valve. All 5 modes can be fine tuned incrementally from very sensitive to feeling like a hardtail. These highly customisable adjustments will only be available via Fox and likely select Fox dealers throughout Australia. But the hardware does come preset in easy to grasp settings.
As consumers will not have this trailside service when they pick up their Live Valve build kit or equipped bike, I decided to set the pressures and go ride. Fox’s brand manager Massimo suggested starting in mode 2. With my sag set at 30% and a short trundle up a climb to the trailhead of a familiar and demanding descent I drop my saddle and reached down to unlock my rear shock out of habit. This is where I start to understand how simple this highly complex and tunable system can be, old and deep seeded habits are now possibly redundant.
Pointing the Live Valve equipped Altitude into the first few smooth turns and the bike felt nothing like a typical 150/160mm Enduro bike but rather a super-firm XC bike. As the track steepens and more rocks and roots appear, the system opens and closes the compression circuit (lockout) without noise, hesitation or the slightest sensation that it is actually being opened and closed. I did feel like there was too much support than I’m used to, so I planned to do a few more runs but back the Live Valve off to mode 1 after a run with the system turned off. So the magnetic solenoids or switches are not damaged when the system is turned off they default to completely open. I then did another run down this time with the system off – which means open and plush. When Fox says open Fox means completely open unlike the descend mode we are likely familiar with.
As there was no compression damping I felt like I was flailing around and trying to hold onto a bike that was falling into holes and generally getting away from me and not behaving.
Next run, I pointed down the same track and put the bike into mode 1 which offers the least amount of compression damping. I couldn’t tell the difference between mode 1 and 2, both felt quite firm whenever the going was smooth or pushing into turns. We setup the laptop on the trail next to a section of rocks with large steps, deep ruts and a very tight bermed corner so we could fiddle with the parameters and check out the new settings straight away.
As the Altitude has been around the globe for tests and reviews both mode 1 and 2 shared the same parameter settings which confirmed what I could feel. With the laptop and the secret software we dialled mode 1 right back to minimum compression damping and sent the updated info to the bike and hit the section up again. Popping into the rocks again, the bike behaved completely differently yet retained a very composed manner through the sections of rocks and ruts. The bike was still sitting higher in the travel than I’m used to at this pressure and I was not using the last 25% of travel so we decided to drop the pressures down a bit both front and rear.
Because Live Valve is opening and closing the damping instantaneously the bike doesn’t bog down into the holes and ruts in rough sections, rather sitting higher than most riders will be used to. As soon as we dropped the pressures and brought back the amount Live Valve was doing, It made the bike feel far more familiar, less likely to bog down and wallow into things and pedal like an XC bike everywhere on the trail.
This was the last time we touched anything on the bike, there was no need to do anything else at all. Finishing a run, you just start riding up the hill, then when you get to the top and point down you ride the most nimble feeling 150/160mm bike ever, with all chance of suspension setup error gone.
I do need to point out that at this point there is no data acquisition or recording through Live Valve to view how the suspension is performing. We were fortunate enough to be riding a very familiar trail that I ride many test bikes on and know where I need to be on the bike and how it probably should feel. All adjustments made in the back end of Live Valve were a guess based on ride feel and this could be extremely tricky to articulate to Fox or your Fox service centre, maybe even impossible or it could involve repeated trial and error.
Perhaps with time, this functionality will evolve and riders could have a snazzy app that can help them tune their own bike based on real time ride data or would this just mean less time in the saddle and yet more time looking at screens and missing the wonders of the real world?
Will we see Live Valve more in XC, DH or EWS circuits? XC most certainly, DH possibly and EWS highly likely. This would likely rely on the ability to change settings in the field based on the terrain and obstacles that riders face around the world.
Where Live Valve is today with its availability drawing near, it is already super impressive stuff removing almost the need to fiddle with settings and lockouts on the trail letting you focus on the fun stuff, and what could be better than that?