It took a while for Fox Racing Shox to introduce a long travel single crown fork. And by long I mean long. It’s huge. The 36 160mm has been around for a few years and is a great fork; very stiff but not super plush like a downhill fork. The 180mm 36 is a fork for when you want a 40 can do on the descents, but can be taken to the trails as well. You can ride a dual crown for trails, in fact I had a Rockshox Boxxer that did a few cross country rides, but switchbacks and tight, technical trails aren’t it’s forte. When you want to tear down steep, technical and demanding trails without a shuttle or a lift to the top and where the top is only accessed under your own steam, well, you need to look in this direction.

The Float 180 or to give it it’s full name, the 2011 Fox Racing Shox 36 FLOAT 180 FIT RLC is crammed with these features:

• 180mm travel
• a Fox FIT RLC damper
• 20QR thru axle system
• Kashima coat stanchions
• low-speed compression
• high-speed compression
• air spring pressure
• post style disc brake mounting
• rebound adjustment

In short it’s fully loaded!

The choice as to whether to go for the VAN or the Float is mostly preference these days. There’s not much between them, spring or air, black or white, the weight difference is negligible and ultimately only you can decide which one suits your needs. I went for the air this time as I didn’t want to buy a load of springs like I did with my last VAN. And to keep things looking spot on, went with the white, just like my bike. The ability to easily alter the fork via the air pressure is both brilliant and frustrating at the same time, but mostly brilliant. With a coil you generally find the one that works and stick with it.

The slight downside with air is you can endlessly mess with the pressure to get that ’perfect’ ride. Of course with rebound, high and low speed adjustments there is plenty of tuning you can do. Almost endless in fact. I find that I set the pressure and rebound and then it’s just tweaking of the compression when you find yourself on different terrain.

The rebound adjuster is on the bottom of the fork leg so it’s not something you can tweak on the trail. You might think it’s not in a great position and could be damaged, but it’s covered by a screw-on metal cap, which you remove before adjusting. I find this works fine as I don’t alter the rebound too much anyway. The low and high speed compression adjusters are on the top of the right leg, large in size, easy to alter with gloves on and the best I have come across with nice clicky actions. On the left leg is the air pressure adjust: unscrew the cap, plumb in your pump and off you go.

Installing the fork is straightforward. The post mount means no adapters are needed for your brakes, just the usual washer collection. The 20mm QR is easy to use if a little over fussy for some. The claimed weight for my 1.5 steerer version is 2.35 kg (5.18 lb) and after taking a little of the steerer seems about right and the lightest in class.

Initially I had it set for the maximum sag for my weight but on more trail rides it’s too much and the fork feels sloppy so I ended up adding 10 psi for a better trail ride. Of course this fork is really at home on much burlier terrain and the extra pressure can come in handy with very rutted trails, stopping the fork disappearing down them. It feels super plush from the off and I didn’t really notice much stiction either, like on my previous VAN forks. They also seemed to bed in very quickly, which is always a bonus and this was no doubt helped by the Kashima coating and new FIT RC2 inverted damper.

Hitting the long alpine descents is why I got this fork. Riding the technical terrain in Chamonix has proved eye opening after a previous season on the 140 VAN and the 160 VAN. I wasn’t entirely sold on a air fork for days of long descents but the Float 180 has been spectacular so far.

Nothing has been too much for it, in fact it’s way better than me on first evidence. A 25 minute descent down one of the most demanding singletracks, chock full of drops, roots and rocks was effortless for the fork, if not me. The switchbacks were handled easily and the plenty of feedback from the front wheel lets you know your grip levels. I haven’t noticed any flex from the fork and I would guess you would have to be downhilling at a world class level to notice anything like this. In fact a few racers have been using the single crown 180 at this years Sea Otter and the South African World Cup.

It’s an expensive fork, not as expensive as the 40, but still a lot of money. The advantage is you really can ride trails on this fork, which at 180mm of travel, is pretty impressive even before you take into account it’s descending abilities. The 2011 Fox 36 Float 180 RLC’s are the best long travel fork on the market I reckon and the ideal fork to get you to the top, but not remind you your not on a DH bike on the way back down.

For more information on the Fox 36 Float 180 RLC, hit Fox Racing Shox and for all UK and European residents, check out Mojo for all your Fox suspension needs. Happy Trails!

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