LONG TERM RIDES
Our biketest chief is waxing Lyrik-al about his new fork
The latest on our team bikes – where we’ve ridden, what we’ve changed on them and what we’ve broken this month!
Having run a whole lot of different forks on the Merida over the winter, in the process of compiling our annual grouptest ( MBUK 353), I’m no stranger to working with new front ends on my big-travel beast. The latest addition has somehow been both blissfully undemanding and very obviously different, though, right from the first ride.
If you’ve already checked out the picture and haven’t had your head under a rock for the past couple of months, then it’s pretty clear what the new fork is. The 2019 RockShox Lyrik RC2 is unmistakable, with its red lower legs – a nod to the brand’s classic DH forks. Thanks to the fact the One-Sixty is stealth black, there are no colour-clashing issues either. (Even the Merida frame logos are so low-key that I regularly get asked what bike it actually is.) That’s not going to be the case with other bikes, though, and, while there’s a black option too, I imagine a lot of brands are going to be rolling out more Lyrik-complementary bloodred colourways for next year.
It’ll be interesting to see if other brands follow the lead of Whyte and Transition and use shorter-offset forks on their bikes. I’ve gone for the shorter-offset (37mm rather than 46mm) version of this new 170mm fork and I’m loving the interplay of geometry and weight distribution changes. Decreasing the offset at the crown increases the trail measurement on the ground, so the bike is longer, more stable and wants to self-correct back straight again more. It also moves mass (bar, stem, front brake) nearer to the turning axis, so the steering feels lighter, making it a double win for flat-out, ragged-edge riding.
The massively-capable performance and user-friendly tuning bandwidth of the previous Lyrik earned it the win in our grouptest, and the new version takes that even further. It’s got a much bigger (42 per cent) ‘DebonAir’ negative chamber, which gives it crazily supple sensitivity, but it has more mid-stroke support as well, so volume spacers aren’t an essential for more aggressive riders. The ‘Charger 2’ damper has a wider adjustment range and consistent changes between clicks, too, making it easier to tune in your perfect fork feel. Now all it has to do is prove as reliable as the previous Lyrik – so keep watching this space over the next few months.