Manitou R7 MRD Absolute or Fox RL32

[brendancg]

My soon to be dead current hard tail has a Fox RL32 on the front end. Awesome fork as far as I can tell. However due to the death of the frame it is attached to I have purchased a new BMC Four Stroke Frame which came with a Manitou R7 MRD Absolute attached. I am hoping that someone here has ridden on both and can give me a recommendation as to which would be the better option. I have the bike to compete in the Sani2c in South Africa in just over a month. Any advice regarding these forks would be greatly appreciated. The Manitou is a 2009 model and the Fox is a 2007? model (brought it second hand as well).

(By the way I am a road rider slowly being converted to mountain)

[trailgumby]

From what I read the new absolute damping in the manitous is a significant improvement over the previous system, the Stable Platform Valve. How it compares to Fox I can't really tell you unfortunately.

Something to think about: Fox forks are well known and well-regarded worldwide. If you run into fork issues and need to get it serviced quickly I suspect you will have an easier time with Fox products. The Manitou sysem is relatively new and doesn't have teh market penetration, so may be a riskier proposition in relatively remote locations.

I have a manitou SPV rear shock in my jekyll and it is not even remotely LBS serviceable. It has to go back to the local rep even for somethign as simple as a main chamber seal replacement, which is a straightforward DIY job for the equivalent Fox unit on my son's bike (also a Jekyll). And I have actually done this job, using public information from Fox on youtube. It was very straightforward.

That may tell you something useful about each company's approach to maintaining their products for the purposes of your trip to Africa.