Going the Distance
Unlike many of the idiots who populate the internet and comment on everything, I actually race a SID. I've been riding and racing the Rock Shox SID suspension fork since September of '97, 10 full months of torment. In that time I've seen horrendously muddy conditions (Lemurian, Big Bear, etc...), dry and rocky conditions (Moab) and everything in between. Here's how the SID has worked for me...
First of all, the fork is freakin' light. That's really 75% of the reason I bought it. The other 25% is because it's blue. It's still light and blue, which makes me happy. If you read my initial review of the fork, you know how pleasantly surprised I was by the performance. I've been riding the stock medium damping cartridge for my 155 lbs, and although it feels like it rebounds pretty fast in the parking lot test, it seems pretty dialed for high speed on the trail. Not only that, but in 10 months of hard riding I still haven't blown up the cartridge. That's a big change from my shop experiences with Judy cartridges.
Compared to other forks I've used, the SID's 2.5" of travel just seems longer. I rarely bottom it out unless I let the air pressure get too low (it takes about a month to drop from 60 psi to the low 50's for me), but I seem to use 99% of the travel pretty frequently. I set mine up with the air chamber all the way small, the low-speed damping orifice all the way closed (maximum), the negative spring at medium high-ish and about 60-65 psi of air pressure. I have found no reason to change these settings significantly since I settled on them in the first few weeks.
It might be nice to have the option of a little more travel to make the fork more appropriate for the new breed of super light race-ready FS bikes, but I'm led to believe Rock Shox has such a thing in the works for '99. Since I intend to keep racing my Fisher hardtail with genesis geometry, which I feel is the absolute ultimate race machine, I don't really need any more travel. So performance-wise, the fork is entirely satisfactory.
How's it hold up? Naturally I put boots on mine right away. Only a complete freakin' moron would run a $700 fork without boots. I see plenty of them out there though, so if someone tells you how fast his SID wore out, ask him about boots. If he didn't use them, call him an asshole.
Anyway, I was initially pretty worried about those teflon coated stanchion tubes. I've seen more than one pair of Judy SL's lose all their teflon and turn into rigid forks with lots of bushing play. In a long series of muddy races from March through June, racing every weekend and most Wednesday nights, I've only had the fork apart 3 times. Each time it was clean inside, but I put more lube and oil in anyway, and wiped of the seals, stanchions and the insides of the boots carefully. I also found I had to replace the little rubber washers on the ti bolts at the bottom of the fork legs about every 2nd overhaul. I went to the hardware store and bought about a zillion of them for 20 cents each, so I'm prepared now. In between overhauls, I occasionally lifted up the boots and wiped around the seals and stuff, then squirted some tri-flow on the stanchions and replaced the boots.
The guys from Bicycling magazine were whining about how everyone's forks completely stopped working at Big Bear, but mine still were perfectly smooth at the end of the race. Not only that, they kept working perfectly smoothly for another two weeks until I finally pulled them apart after the Marin Knobular (yet another mud bog of a race). This is probably the least amount of maintenance I've ever put in on a suspension fork, so I'm pretty much all the way stoked.
Perhaps I just got lucky though. After all, I have an easy job, I got straight A's in college, my wife is incredibly beautiful and sexy and makes more money than me; maybe I just lead a charmed life. So I asked my friend and training partner Superdan Garcia about his SID. Dan is a generation-x type and he's much harder on equipment than me. He has yet to ride a frame a full year without busting it (except his OCLV, go figure).
Dan's SID came with one of the aluminum top caps threaded on by gorilla, so the first time he took it apart it started to strip out the wrench flats (despite using a high-quality socket). When he finally got it out, Rock Shox sent him a replacement top cap, but didn't include the little air valve, so in the process of trying to remove the valve from the old top cap he managed to damage it slightly (and still not remove it). So the old top cap is still in there and now it leaks air until you put the little itty bitty screw back in, so you have step briskly when airing up the fork. Rock Shox promised to send him a new valve which should stop the problem. Other than that he reported the same good fortune. Every time he's taken his fork apart it's been clean inside.
In the time I've had my SID, the guys I ride with have blown up a couple of Bombers (one of them twice) and had to send them back to the factory to be fixed. In contrast, my SID has given me zero difficulties despite very trying conditions. Even if it weren't so unbelievably light, I'd ride it just for the excellent performance. As far as I'm concerned the SID is the fork for me for the foreseeable future. It still works as good as new, maybe even better, so I'll just keep racing it next year.
If you want this kind of performance but you don't want to spend $700, here's what the guys at my local shop, Precision Bicycles (besides River Rat, the only serious MTB shop in the Sacramento Area) have been doing. First buy a Judy T2 SL. That's the one that doesn't come with an oil cartridge. The SL means it has an aluminum steerer. Fisher and Santa Cruz spec these forks OEM, so sometimes you can get one cheap from someone who didn't know better and upgraded. Expect to pay around $300 or so. Then pick up a pair of Englund air cartridges for about $100 and drop them in. Presto, you now have a fork right around 3 lbs (weighed by my local shop guys) for around $400, or less if you get lucky. Of course, it won't be blue, but that's why I payed all the extra money, eh?
My initial impressions are that the Englund cartridges are pretty sweet, and my homeboys haven't experienced any troubles with them in the few months they've had them in. Even the famous Steve, usually a magnet for jacked-up forks made out of old screen-door parts, hasn't blown up his Englunds yet. One of them started to unscrew at the Cascade Cream Puff 100, but someone with a brain pointed it out to Steve so he screwed it back in. End of Problem.