RockShox PIKE Ultimate: 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's Pike is probably one of the most popular forks to come to the market. From short travel trail bikes to the edge of enduro, the Pike has been seen handling it all and with no hiccups. It's not often a product comes around that can take on as much as the pike does but sometimes the cycling community is blessed with gems like the Pike. Let's see what our buddy Ryan thought of the fork:

Ryan's Review

Upgrading the fork on my trail bike has been a long time coming. The bike was formerly equipped with a Fox Float 32 140mm fork, and wasn’t really suitable for me, as I am a somewhat aggressive rider who is also a tad on the husky side. I would find the fork diving on slower, more technical descents; and it also seemed to have a little too much flexion going on for me.

Now, it wasn’t my intention initially to put such a costly fork on my three-year-old trail bike. However, I knew I wanted to go with a Pike because of their reputation as trail forks, and because I like to be my own bike mechanic, therefore RockShox's reputation for being easy to set up and maintain was appealing to me. Then, upon further research of the available options in the Pike line up, I became intrigued by the Ultimate’s Charger 2 damper. I was very interested in the possibility of this damper being a sort of “set and forget” type of thing, especially seeing how I had issues with the previous fork diving on me in slow, techy sections of trail. So, the Charger 2 having slow and fast compression adjustment were very appealing to me.

All the above considerations led me to say to myself “What the hell?”, and I went ahead and opted for the Ultimate. Hopefully, in the next couple of years, it will be transferred over to a higher-end frame.

As far as setup and performance go I couldn’t be happier. It has taken some tweaking over a few rides, but I have been able to set my slow speed compression and my high-speed compression levels to where I don’t generally need to fiddle with them on the trail anymore. So, basically set and forget. The Pike goes through its travel in a buttery smooth progression that I was heretofore unaware was possible. I was a tad worried about how the geometry of the bike would change going up in fork travel by 20mm. But, I am happy to report that it handles like a dream now. The extra travel slackened the head tube angle by about one degree, and I can feel the difference when plowing through rock gardens on descents, but at the same time, I don’t really notice any difference in how the bike handles climbs. It seems that I was able to keep all the climbing capabilities of the bike while increasing its downhill fortitude. Part of that is probably due to the offset options of the Pike, as it only comes in a 46mm or 37mm offset option in the 27.5 model. The previous fork had a 44mm offset, and not wanting to make the bike longer, and preferring to keep the wheelbase more similar to what it initially was, I opted for the 37mm offset. It all has worked out perfectly!

Conclusion

"I’m really happy with my new fork. It has given new life to my bike and it’s rider. Thanks to the staff at Worldwide too for always being so helpful! Best bike shop in the world!" - Ryan