So I finally got around to swapping the forks over. The forks came stock as 180mm travel, so a bit of tinkering was required to drop them to 160mm. Have to say I'm dam impressed with how easy they are to work on.
So off went the Ohlins and on went the Mezzers, both similar forks in that they both have the three air chambers; so one may inclined to think they feel very similar.
Not the case at all, the immediate thing I noticed is just how much compression the Ohlins have, super firm and a lot of feedback. The Mezzers are super supple in comparison. I've applied a fair few clicks of high and low speed compression to provide a similar feel.
The Mezzers are meant to be 17% stiffer than the Ohlins, but tbh I couldn't feel a difference. I suspect there's a lot of flex in the front wheel that negates any gains in fork stiffness.
A massive change between the two forks is the brake away forces. The Mezzers are silky smooth, something Ohlins needs to work on imo.
Lastly , fork offset. The Ohlins are 51mm while the Mezzers are 44mm. I was expecting the 44mm was going to blow my mind, super stable, fun, better in everyway. To my surprise I think I might actually prefer the 51mm - felt more playful, maybe twitchier in some ways but I enjoyed that. Nevertheless, super stoked with the overall feel of the Mezzers and I'm sure I'll get used to the reduced offset over time.
Forks aside, I've noticed a thing about the Highlander. I was initially running the recommended 30% sag, felt great suspension wise, but with an already low bb, pedal strikes were often. 20% sag is the solution.
This provides the additional benefit of of reducing the effective chainstay length at sag. Definitely provides a more playful bike running less sag.
- 30% sag = 45mm of travel = 12.5mm increase in chainstay length
- 20% sag = 30mm of travel = 8mm increase to chainstay length.
What's insane is that 25mm of rear travel occurs at full travel! Funny that reviews rave on about the new enduro's rearward axel path, but its minor in comparison.
There seems to be a few geo charts floating around with hugely different numbers. So with a tape measure I can safely say the numbers in the geo chart below appear to be correct.