Öhlins mtb fork review

Basically, there’s always a dull plasticine feel at the tyre, rather than a plastic feel, and it’s either quicker or slower… if that makes sense?

The Öhlins air spring has a very precise window to get things right though, and balance enough support without being too firm in the mid stroke. If you don’t want to lower the cockpit by reducing the number of spacers under the stem, you’ll have to adopt a more hunched riding position to keep pressure on the front wheel.

In rowdy enduro sessions with big drops, the RXF38 m.2 holds up well at first, but reaches its limits in rougher trail sections with plenty of rocks and roots.

I don’t have a current model year Lyrik fork to test against, but have ridden that fork on test bikes and been very impressed, so reckon it would be a close call. There’s a table with recommended pressures on the lower legs. Rather than running the main chamber with less than the recommended air pressure and the ramp up chamber with more to gain extra suppleness off the top and still get enough bottom out resistance, there is more than enough suppleness off the top now, so you need to tune the whole spring side for more support or the fork can feel a bit hyperactive.

Touchdown and back/forth movement around sag is now every bit as light and fast as RockShox’s Charger 3.1, so there’s amazing ground tracing of small bumps and the damping also feels composed, calm and smooth on bigger hits, absorbing slappy hits dropping off ledges or landing jumps.

I ran the rebound much more in the middle here too, which must also point to much less friction in the system, considering the if the TTX damper hasn’t changed.

In the RXF36 m.3, Öhlins has dropped the negative chamber spacer altogether and put a larger one in the main chamber. It was doable — and, again, I was able to get great results out of the spring as configured in the m.2 — but it wasn’t the easiest fork to set up.

The reconfigured spring in the RXF36 m.3 feels like that transition has been smoothed out across a wider range of spring settings.

It’s a good bit of trial and error to cycle between the settings and find the sweet spot, which might be a big ask for some riders that don’t fiddle with suspension all the time. And, presumably, whatever has been done to the air spring to tweak the ride feel that I’m not allowed to know about yet.

The setup is still more faff to set up than other rivals because I have to set up the three-way air spring in the right order.

The design relies on the principle of creating damping force from oil pressure build up one side of the piston, and gas pressure on the other side. The extra bushing overlap is to allow each half to telescope in and out more smoothly.

RXF 36 lowers and the forged crown are both completely new then and use less material in places to achieve the weight saving, although this new M3 was actually a smidge heavier than the M2 I tested about four years ago.

But can it shine in our comprehensive comparison test?

The Öhlins RXF38 m.2 flaunts its Swedish heritage with yellow decals and blue wiper seals, all rounded off by a colour-matched sag ring – a nod to the Swedish national flag. Pump up the ramp up chamber too much though, to combat this like on the older M2 model, and it seems to affect the ride height and overall ride feel here more, rather than just the bottom out zone.

With a well-dialled setup, the fork delivers a smooth ramp-up, which is noticeable especially with big individual impacts. To understand this, you need to know that the physics of making an air chamber smaller means it becomes less linear and more progressive. Before you get too carried away thinking this means it’s better than Fox, I also much prefer the GRIPX2 fork to the GRIPX, so maybe that’s not as conclusive as it sounds.