What’s everyone liking out of the box these days? Going on a XL GT Fury with a 130mm head tube so DVO is out with its short axle to crown and Manitou is on the bubble with its 143mm max head tube + headset spec. Headset I’m going to use ‘should’ be 11mm, but I know better and will wait to verify that. Frame is a true 130mm.
Ideally something I can do most/all of the maintenance myself if I choose to. Owned Fox and Rockshox before and did the lowers services etc myself.
Don’t care at all if it’s not a Boxxer to match the Rockshox coil shock.
Not looking to go the route of custom damper etc as I realize I won’t be riding this nearly as much as my enduro bike with the Avy hybrid coil/air setup in my Zeb.
Willing to wait a bit, I’m still in recovery from knee surgery mode.
I am likely going out on a limb here, but I have not had a good experience with my manitou dorado pro. Finicky in setup and could never find the right balance between composure and being harsh. So I personally would not recommend the dorado. I’ve found current 40s to be simple to find a happy spot and my previous boxxers were also easy to get ‘good enough’. I bought the dorado because it’s different and looks rad, but I haven’t been satisfied with the performance.
EXT!
A friend of mine has a new dorado pro and he doesn’t really seem to be able to get the front end of his bike feeling the way he wants either
Can I ask how heavy you are and what kind of terrain you ride?
Yea for sure 190lb, 6’1. I did a lot of park laps at Whistler and Sun Peaks. Rode plenty of rough tech at both Whistler and Sun Peaks (not just jump trails). Also a couple days at Kamloops bike ranch. Got to say it felt best on jump trails. Especially at speed I found it unable to respond well to chop regardless of air pressure or clicker position. I tried so many different setups with the air spring and compression / rebound. Just couldn’t get it to where I was happy.
Dorado and DH38 are best forks in my opinion. Both are more tricky to set up than Boxxer or 40 but they will reward you if you like to tinker.
Boxxer is easy and less adjustments.
I enjoy the Fox damper and airspring but the 40 chassis is much to rigid for me, IMHo. I’m 175lb, Vet expert rider.
I have the Dorado Pro on my Zerode G3. It’s my favorite DH fork that I’ve ridden. It does take more time and testing to find the sweet spot, but if you don’t mind a little testing, you can get a very composed and smooth fork with great support. The clicks are very pronounced. One click will be on, and the next very off. I like fast and rough DH. It’s also very composed with excellent chassis feel in braking bumps. I really don’t like the chassis feel of the Boxxer in fast dry and loose breaking bumps.
I have found the Ohlins to be my favorite so far. I have a Fox 40 on one bike but now have Ohlins on all of my others including Enduro and trail bikes. Once you get the settings dialed, I think they're the most responsive fork I've ever been on.
I've ridden them all and currently on a Dorado Pro.
My son rode his all last season and after some setup work and tuning, got to a place where it reallllly runs well on his Jedi. Convinced me to swap out my 40 with tuned RC2 damper swap and Vorsprung Secus which was quite good. IRT and main spring pressure setup is most time consuming. From what we've found, similar to the older Dorado - it seems best well rounded at roughly ~1.8:1 - 1.9:1 pressure ratio (IRT to main) depending on ramp up requirements. Slightly higher IRT will help with support and I would recommend more LSC and less HSC as they are quite highly damped.
I'm pretty substantial but running 150/83psi respectively currently.
Just to dispel the idea I didn’t carefully set the dorado up — I spent hours bracketing both air pressures in the main / IRT chambers and the compression / rebound clickers. Wasted entire shuttle sessions doing this. Also bought a digital shock pump just to make sure I had single psi accuracy lol. Simply couldn’t get it to a happy place. Used other people’s settings that had it at a claimed magic place and never felt as good as a 40 (which was much easier to setup). Part of the reason I bought the dorado pro is because of the ardent following in various online forums. However, I’m adding my experience here because I haven’t found it to be as good as a 40 or boxxer. It’s not a bad fork, just not as good.
I have found the manitou forks including my dorado pretty easy to setup. I end up with final settings pretty near recommended windows per their website guides,
I'm currently on the newest (37) version of the Manitou Dorado Expert fork and I love them. I just followed Manitou's set up guide and just tweaked it a bit from there. Their perfect. The HS Compression took a bit of time to dial in. But once I found the sweet spot, it's been perfect ever since.
I believe that the EXT VAIA has many of the benefits of the Dorado, plus a sliding bushing, dual positive air (coilish and adjustable), offset adjustable, axle adjustable and lots of Ti hardware.
I run the 1.5 ratio in the IRT with bit more compression damping, if the fork feels to harsh it's great ratio to start with, digitalpump is a must
Its possible you just got a lemon.
Bad bushing tolerances, slightly bent uppers causing alignment issues. Plenty of valid mechanical reasons why your fork can be bad but others good.
Its not just setup related. Sometimes a product is a dud.
I'd go Ohlins, out of the box they provide the best damping. Only thing comparable is much more expensive forks, or custom tuned Boxers and 40s etc.
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