Fox 34 SL & Float SL

My review period for Fox’s latest and greatest lightweight trail fork got off to a rocky start; it collected dust in the garage for a few months as I healed a (very) broken wrist. And while I spent some time on the new Rocky Mountain Element as I recovered, initially, it was difficult to push myself and a bicycle in a meaningful way.

But winter, with its wet-cold and ever-present snowline concealing upper trails, is often when I reach for the little bike to get some shorter, high-intensity rides in. When grip levels are low, you might as well be out there on Rekons, right? And now that spring is here and you’re bike-shopping for the final BC Bike Race, it’s time to dive into the bright orange suspension I’ve been using.

Fox launched the 34 SL to replace the 34 Step-Cast, touting significant stiffness gains and attempting to ride the line between the increasingly aggressive demands of World Cup XC courses and The People’s Favorite genre: downcountry. These stiffness gains come with a slight weight penalty over the narrow chassis of the 34 Step-Cast, but it’s still a whopping~300g lighter than the ‘standard’ Fox 34, which the 34 SL also seeks to replace. Also gone is the ability to run dinky rotors to shave grams – 180mm minimum on the new lowers. Stiffer chassis for bigger brakes, bigger damper, more tire clearance, more travel… On paper, the 34 SL suits my little-bike needs well, especially in the new-for-34 130mm configuration.

Details and Highlights

Fork

• Wheel size: 29
• Travel (mm): 110, 120, 130
• Rake: 44mm offset
• Air Spring: Float EVOL Compliant
• Damper: Grip X, Grip SL (tested)
• 180mm post-mount, 203mm maximum
• Listed weight: 1503g (130mm Grip SL)
• CAD1469 as tested

Shock

• EVOL air sleeve from Float shocks
• 3-position (open, medium, firm) switch, available handlebar remote
• Listed weight: 249g (190×45, no mounting hardware)
• CAD669 as tested

I’ve been using the new 3-position, ‘Twin Stick’ (200 CAD) lever that provides control for fork and shock position adjust as well as a cable-operated dropper post. The Twin Stick can be configured to operate the fork & shock, either one, or in a 2-position mode.

While both fork and shock are marginally heavier than their RockShox XC competitors, all-in Fox claims their complete ‘XC Ecosystem’ can be assembled into the lightest XC suspension/dropper combination on the market. The caveat here is that this requires using the 2-position Transfer SL dropper post rather than the infinitely-adjustable Transfer pictured here. If you’re someone who never puts their post in the middle like me, you may prefer the SL over the standard post, with its low-maintenance coil spring. I do.

What you view as competition to the 34 SL is going to vary based on your use case. I’ve got a fair amount of time on Rockshox’s SID Ultimate, which feels slightly undergunned compared to the 34 SL even when attempting to account for the missing 10mm of squish. The Pike is probably a more direct comparison; however, the extra 400 grams of heft gives it significant stiffness advantages, and it’s probably best compared to the 36 SL, where it lines up in total travel as well. The 34 SL treads water somewhere in between, like ‘downcountry’ always has.

Setup and Installation

After all the requisite cutting and bolting, the only confusion was around getting the new Twin Stick to pull on the fork’s damper dial correctly. It’s one of those tasks that requires three hands to get everything rotated correctly and tightened down, pushing against springs the whole time. Once the cable tension is sorted on all three outputs from the Twin Stick, you’re ready to set air pressure and the dials to their initial recommended settings and ride. I started with zero tokens in the fork.

Riding

While some folks will be shopping these components with a scale and a spreadsheet with column headers like “$/g”, I also wanted to find out how they perform on the trail. Immediately apparent was the fork’s supple nature, absorbing small bumps more like it’s heavier siblings than a typical pinner XC fork. It’s also a bit of a wheezer; you can hear the damper working hard, especially on bigger hits.

It also sits a little taller than Rockshox’s 120mm SID Ultimate I’d taken off, but that’s not a surprise given the +10mm travel bump. As my wrist got stronger and I overcame some post-injury mental hurdles, I played with volume spacers to gain some additional progressivity to the fork deep in its travel. I settled on one, leaving me with a nice mid-stroke platform, maintained initial suppleness, and helped tame harsh bottom outs. On big compressions, I never quite tamed a feeling of squirrelly-ness in the last 15% of travel; it felt a little like the damper was momentarily operating at reduced capacity, and the fork came back up faster than expected. This wasn’t an issue with features that are more low-speed compression, like jump lips or even sharp/harsh berms, but picture those large holes that make you feel like you’re doing pushups on fast trails. Mind you, feeling squirrelly on a short-travel bike on big holes at higher speed isn’t an entirely uncommon sensation, but something I noticed up front occasionally; the rear handled everything well with a nice balance of sensitivity and big-hit compliance with no unexpected behavior.

As this is an XC-ish setup, we need to think critically about more than just descending. In Open, there’s noticeable pedal bob while grinding up smooth trails/roads, and a quick push on the Twin Stick brings us to Medium. Another push, and Firm puts us in near-lockout.

I kept the Twin Stick in the 3-position mode, which enables you to remotely adjust to an adjacent mode; you cannot go from Open to Firm (or vice versa) without two presses. In practice, this is a non-issue. Where I found it imperfect was that the force required is rather high; you’re fighting two return springs in either damper, as well as cable and housing friction. It’s not terribly hard, but I can imagine if you’re a marathon racer or a small rider, it would get tiring. I don’t have any actual data, but I also know Fox has done internal testing showing that if an actuator requires less force to use, riders will use it more often. Anecdotally, I probably used the Twin Stick lever less than I might have if it were on a hair trigger.

Damper-wise, while all three modes are distinct, I’d have preferred the middle Medium to be a bit more towards Firm. It’s discernable from Open, but a firmer platform to further reduce bob while grinding away and to push off when working undulating terrain would have been appreciated at times. I’m sure some riders will eschew Open and enjoy the slightly more forgiving Medium setting, but as a user of all three, my preference would be to have Medium closer to Firm than it currently sits.

Conclusions

The 34 SL has an interesting mandate, effectively trying to combine the best of two platforms into one; beefing everything up for the demands of aggressive trail riders while maintaining a World Cup XC diet is a difficult task. The 34 SL fulfils the gram-counting goals here admirably, and I don’t think the weight-loss program has adversely affected performance when descending over the standard 34. Yes, it’s flexier than a 36 or 38mm chassis fork, but that’s to be expected in this category – the 34 SL never felt noodly or scary like the Step-Cast forks could. When times got rough, there was noticeable flex, but the fork continued to track and I never detected any binding or other undesirables.

If I were choosing between Fox’s current lineup for a bike like the Element, I’d consider going with the Grip X damper, choosing externally adjustable LSC/HSC over the 3-position switch.

Overall, the 34 SL is worthy of everything from hour-long sprints before elementary school pick-upd, to marathon XC, to my preferred flavor of downcountry. Too bad Fox-owned RaceFace just declared downcountry dead.