Nice write up! Interesting about the harshness out the box. A buddy of mine and myself are both running the new 40, and found it incredibly hard to equalize the air chambers out the box. He took his apart and found a huge amount of grease in the air side, and it was clogging up the transfer ports. Mine was literally locked out once I had it up to pressure. Trying to get it to equalize was VERY annoying during the set up phase Once the correct amount of grease was in there, it made the fork A LOT smoother and it equalized no problem. If you didn't take yours apart, that may explain some of the harshness. I personally found the 2021 40 to be a "perfection" of the 2020 Grip 2. While I didn't add any additional volume tokens (I know, I should have, but I was lazy) in the 2020 fork, I found it too not have enough support, but it offered amazing traction and comfort. This new version has all that suppleness, but with the right support without having to go crazy with the tokens. It just seems to react EXACTLY how I imagine it to in every scenario. One big thing to note about the 27.5 version (which I have) is that the stock flat upper crown it comes with does not fit a good number of size medium and up bikes. I'm on a large 27.5 V10 7, which has a head tube length of 115mm (plus the external cup) and the 40 would not fit. The lower crown would bottom on my fender, while the stanchions BARELY made it into the top crown. I had to get Fox to send me a drop crown, and now it is on no problem:) A friend of mine had the same experience on her Commencal Furious which has a 125mm head tube.
Dec. 7, 2020, 8:40 a.m. - leon-forfar
Nice write up! Interesting about the harshness out the box. A buddy of mine and myself are both running the new 40, and found it incredibly hard to equalize the air chambers out the box. He took his apart and found a huge amount of grease in the air side, and it was clogging up the transfer ports. Mine was literally locked out once I had it up to pressure. Trying to get it to equalize was VERY annoying during the set up phase Once the correct amount of grease was in there, it made the fork A LOT smoother and it equalized no problem. If you didn't take yours apart, that may explain some of the harshness. I personally found the 2021 40 to be a "perfection" of the 2020 Grip 2. While I didn't add any additional volume tokens (I know, I should have, but I was lazy) in the 2020 fork, I found it too not have enough support, but it offered amazing traction and comfort. This new version has all that suppleness, but with the right support without having to go crazy with the tokens. It just seems to react EXACTLY how I imagine it to in every scenario. One big thing to note about the 27.5 version (which I have) is that the stock flat upper crown it comes with does not fit a good number of size medium and up bikes. I'm on a large 27.5 V10 7, which has a head tube length of 115mm (plus the external cup) and the 40 would not fit. The lower crown would bottom on my fender, while the stanchions BARELY made it into the top crown. I had to get Fox to send me a drop crown, and now it is on no problem:) A friend of mine had the same experience on her Commencal Furious which has a 125mm head tube.