RockShox Damper Upgrade Kit - Charger2.1 RCT3 [Rider Review]

Our "Rider Review" article series features honest reviews from verified purchasers of Worldwide Cyclery. They contain the photos, thoughts, feedback & overall review you are looking for. 

RockShox offers their upgrade Chrager 2.1 kit for those who need their fork to have a certain adjustment to achieve a specific feel. That's why our friend, Kyle, got his hands on one. See what they think of their new damper! 

Overview

With bikes in short supply, I found myself in a position not uncommon for anyone looking for a new whip this year, the bike I wanted was not the bike I could get.

In my case, the YT Decoy 2 came with a base Yari fork lacking the adjustment and overall refinement I was used to. Reviewing my options of buying an upgraded fork, which is as hard to get as a bike, and going for a used fork which probably needs a rebuild, a third option that I wasn’t previously aware of came up from watching one Worldwide Cyclery’s videos: upgrade the unrefined Yari to mimic the damping and spring of the high end “ultimate” series of rock Shox dampers I wanted to upgrade to! While upgrading the damper it's easy to upgrade the air spring as well as it has to come off to change the damper. The air spring can be ordered in different lengths and will change the travel of the fork up to the limits of your existing hardware.

I ordered the parts from Worldwidecyclery.com and watched a few videos online before the new parts arrived a few days later. The process of upgrading the fork is pretty straightforward, pop off the caps, remove the lowers, change the air and dampers out, add some lubrication oil and add some air.

Overall the entire upgrade took about an hour to complete, including time spent cleaning up the fork oil I somehow managed to miss with my bucket when taking off the lowers.

The ride:

Wow. What a difference! The RCT3 damper cartridge damper is a massive upgrade over the stock open bath style damper that the Yari ships with.

The two-way compression and one-way rebound have a good useable adjustment range and the ability to quickly add low-speed compression for long stints in the saddle is a big plus. The adjustability is not the only benefit as I found the damping characteristics to be very good and not only resulted in a better feeling fork but also faster times on my favorite sections of trail.

RockShox isn’t shy about its fork's component interchangeability or upgradeability and even has instructions on its website. One point of caution is to make sure you add the correct amount and correct viscosity of the fluid to the lower chambers of the fork when reassembling. The fluid spec is available on the website, and may be different from the original and does not come with the damper or air spring. Other things you may need are a torque wrench, Allen keys, o-ring pliers, fork grease, assembly lube, and a few miscellaneous sockets that you probably already have.

Final Thoughts

Overall I found the fork upgrade to be a good use of my time and money and I would do it again in a heartbeat! Now knowing how easy it is to do, I’m going to buy a couple of different air springs in different lengths to add some more configurability to my bike. Thanks, Worldwide Cyclery!