Tested
ÖHLINS RFX 36 M2 FORK
£1,245
SPECIFICATION Weight: 2,098g (190mm steerer) • Size tested: 29in /150mm travel • Offset: 44mm • Contact: ohlins.com
Available with either an air or coil spring, this RFX M2 is Öhlins's latest 36mm stanchioned fork. It uses the same twin-tube TTX 18 damper as the brand’s DH fork; a bit of kit that will have stunned many bike nerds while watching one of Loic Bruni’s unbelievably smooth race runs.
The air version tested here uses a self-balancing positive/negative, plus a third chamber to alter ramp up. It’s more complex to set up, as the chambers need inflating in order, but consequently it’s more tunable than a fork where you change the air volume with spacers – since the shifting ramp-up piston can affect support more evenly throughout the stroke. Essentially, the main positive air chamber and the bottom-out chamber equalise as the fork compresses, and this happens earlier in the stroke if the pressure in that bottom-out chamber is lower, and later if it’s higher. Lower pressures, therefore, influence mid-stroke support as well, while higher pressures only really affect bottom-out resistance. It takes patience and experimentation to dial in (I ran around 30psi over the recommendation in the ramp-up chamber), but you can tune support exactly where you want it.
The damping cartridge offers 18 clicks of rebound, 16 of low-speed compression and four clicks of high-speed compression adjustment. The quality, solid-feeling alloy knobs are nice to use and the toned-down, lighter, M2 damping suits a wider range of riders than the previous TTX22 with its thicker damper piston. That said, at 82kg, while I did use a few clicks of compression, I ran the rebound almost wide open for more fluidity, so lighter riders will probably still want less damping.
Öhlins’s twin tube design circulates oil from one side of the piston (on compression) to the other (on return) to resist cavitation or degradation of the damping fluid. The high-speed circuit uses a separate factory-set shim stack valving. M2 lowers run only a very small amount of
