Fox Racing Shox Podium RC3 1

The Fox Racing Shox Podium RC3.

We recently got to take part in a rather unique couple days at Zaca Station MX in Buellton, CA. In the past Fox Racing Shox had done an annual Spring introduction of their products to the mountain bike press. But this time around they wanted to do something completely different, and show off their capabilities in all the arenas they cover. So once we arrived there, we found not only the mountain bike guys, but editors from the motocross scene, as well as ATV and UTV guys. About the only thing missing were watercraft (they’re working on a shock with Bombardier that will isolate the deck from the hull), snowmobiles (for obvious reasons), and the gnarly Baja off-road buggies and trophy trucks.

While they may not have opted for full-size off-road race vehicles, there were representatives from Ford on hand, since Fox now also has some of their trick internal bypass shocks as standard equipment on a new limited production SVT model, the Ford F-150 SVT Raptor.

They also had a vast array of their engineers and race support people on hand, which made you wonder who was left in the offices at their two U.S. factories in Watsonville, CA; and Santee, CA. Chief among them was the founder of the company, Bob Fox, and Bob got things started by telling a tale of how he went from being a full-time engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor, to a full-time poker player…a job that offered him lots of spare time. Answering the question of how the company got started, he said, “Basically, it’s the old story of a hobby or sport that you love, that leads you to start a business.”

The Beginnings of Fox Racing Shox

“I was a motocross rider and a dirt bike rider, and I loved it. Any other old-time motocross riders will remember that the suspension on motocross bikes was going from about four inches of travel in the early 70s, to a foot or so by the mid-70s. Why were they doing that? Because you could go over the big bumps so much faster. That travel just ate up the bumps. I kind of like to think it was like how you hear on car engines that there’s no substitute for cubic inches. Well, it’s kind of the same thing. There’s no substitute for wheel travel. So that’s why that revolution got going, and it was great. But there was one problem, and this problem was my opportunity. The problem was that the shocks that had been working fine up until then were overworking, overheating, they were breaking due to the added stresses of the extra travel. This was especially a problem for the pros, because naturally they’re going the fastest, and they were putting high stresses and loads on the shocks, so you were getting a lot of DNFs.”

“So here I am, I’m a guy who rides motocross, I’m an engineer, I know all about these problems, and I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, maybe I can design a better shock that works with the long-travel suspension.’ At the same time I was fascinated by the idea of an air pressure shock. A shock that instead of a regular coil spring, you just put air pressure in it, and that was the spring. I loved the idea that it would be so easy to change the spring rate…you’d just change the pressure. That’d be lots easier than taking the shock off, changing the coil springs and all that. I also loved the idea that the air spring, the physics of it, where at the end of the travel, the air pressure was going up exponentially. That was kind of an inherent way that the shock would prevent bottom out. I weighed about 200 pounds at the time, and I experienced a lot of bottom out off big jumps. Those are the reasons I was fascinated by the idea of an air shock, and why I designed an air shock.”

The original Fox Airshox design.

Showing off a photo of the original Fox Airshox, Bob said, “You’ll notice an air valve at the top eyelet, and you’ll also notice at the bottom there’s a cutout by the eyelet and a plus on one side, and a minus on the other. That was where you could put a wrench and adjust the damping. That was kind of cool, because external damping adjustment was something that not a lot of shocks had back then. I think in all the sports you see adjustable shocks everywhere, but back then that was pretty different. You couldn’t get it, so it was a pretty cool feature to have. We sold about 200 pair in 1975. Not great, but not a bad start.”

“By mid-year I realized they needed to be improved. They had one big problem. They were great over big bumps, and great when you were landing from jumps, but they tended to be harsh over small bumps. The new design had an air valve at the top, and an air valve on the bottom. It was a dual pressure air design. The top was a low pressure, so it would handle these small bumps pretty well, and the bottom pressure was a high pressure, so again, it wouldn’t bottom out over the big jumps. I got some prototypes built in late ’75, and tested them with Brad Lackey, and right away Brad said, ‘These work really good,’ so I knew I was on to something. We shut off production of the single pressure, and moved on to dual pressure.”

“The next major thing that happened was that I got a call from Eric Crippa, saying, ‘Kent Howerton would like to try your air shock on his Husky.’ They said, ‘He’s got this new Curnutt (shock) that he really likes a lot, but he’s heard a lot about your rear shock and would like to try it. So I had to fly down to Florida and spend some time meeting with Kent, and getting to know Eric Crippa, and by the end of the day, I got the good news. Kent said, ‘I like your shock the best, we’re going to run them this year.’ That was a real sense of satisfaction for me, but I didn’t realize at that moment the significance of it. I didn’t realize what it was going to lead to.”

“So Kent’s running them, and running the 500cc National MX series on that Husky, and for me I’m back at the office running the business, and then come Friday afternoon I’d jump on a plane and fly to where Kent is racing to support him and Eric, and they can do well. And hey, that effort was really worth it, because guess what? Kent won the 1976 500cc National Championship on Fox Airshox. Wow.”

“When I look back on it now, it’s doubly amazing to me, because here we are, it’s just two years since I first put pencil on paper doing my first-ever shock design, and don’t forget, there are other big corporations in Japan and elsewhere, and they’ve been making shock absorbers for years for these things. Here I am out of nowhere, two years later, and we’re winning this National Championship with guys like that for competition. Pretty awesome, I think.”

“In 1977, it was Marty Smith winning the 500cc National Championship.” Displaying an ad from back in the day, Bob said, “Here’s an ad on it, and you’ll notice some other names of these guys who were using them. Brad Lackey, Steve Stackable, Jim Pomeroy, Warren Reid…a real who’s who of who was motocross back in the day, using the shocks. So after two National Championships like that, guess what happened? In a word, sales exploded. We went from selling about 200 pair in 1975, to 10,000 pair a couple years later. Those two back-to-back championships are what really launched the company.”

Fox likes to be known as a vehicle dynamics company, and with the array of markets that they build for, including bicycle, motorcycle, snowmobile, ATV, UTV, and automotive, who can argue with them?

Bob also ran through some of the company’s other highlights. Building shocks for Rick and Roger Mears for their Indy Cars. Getting involved in snowmobiles. Taking on the mountain bike shock and fork markets, and finally, coming full circle, he said, “Back to the present, we’ve come out with a new Podium shock for motocross, and for me personally, that’s extremely interesting, because that’s where we started. It’s kind of like déjà vu. As a business decision, I’d say let’s do that even if we didn’t think we could make any money. It’s just a passion thing. We want to do it. We’re back into motocross.” So there’s some of the background of the company, and we’re back up to the present day.

The Podium RC3 Shock

Upon meeting the gang from the moto division (Engineer Everet Ericksen, and tech honcho Mike “Neezer” Marquez), they were a particularly pumped-up group. Division 7 / Star Racing / Yamaha’s Broc Tickle had scored the first podium for Fox with their new shock, dubbed appropriately enough, the Podium RC3. As Neezer said, “Between Showa and Kayaba, I don’t know when the last time another brand of shock absorber has been on the podium at a Supercross. Maybe 15 or 20 years.”

Broc Tickle scored Fox's first podium in well over 20 years aboard his Division 7 / Star Racing / Yamaha.

He also ran through some of the history of how they got back into motocross, working with Gavin Gracyk during the ’07 season, when he was putting in some great rides as a privateer against the top factory talent. Neezer said, “He was at one of the races in Colorado, and Kevin Windham had won the overall the week before, and here’s Gavin coming up charging through and he’s got Tedesco behind him and I’m going, ‘This is great. He’s in front of all these factory guys.’ He passes Windham, and that’s when I realized how amazing this was. At the end of that series, he ended up being the top privateer…but that was on kind of a me-too shock. It had high-speed and low-speed compression adjustment, and a rebound adjustment. But it was a prototype that we had to make for his ’07 Honda.”

We put it together, valved it, tested with him a couple times, and he said, ‘This is good.’ But through that season, being with him at the races, we kind of noticed some things that we could improve on. He’d come in during a timed practice, and complain, I need to drop the back end 2mm.’ So they’d bring the hammers and the chisels and work on the preload, and we’re thinking, ‘There’s got to be a better way than this.’ So that led us to some ideas about how we could do a preload adjuster.”

Everet continued, “Neezer mentioned hammers and chisels to change the preload, and that’s a pain, and here’s what we came up with. The spring has a notch in it, and there’s a corresponding pin in the preload ring. By undoing a 4mm screw, you loosen the clamp. Then you can rotate the whole spring, and it also rotates the adjuster relative to the body. The clamp has a keeper that always rides on the reservoir, so it keeps the clamp in the proper orientation. We have an Acme thread, which is a load-bearing machined thread. You can do a quarter turn and lock it back down. This is invaluable in a race setting. You can do a change with no tools other than a 4mm, and have it done in a minute.”

Fox's unique locking collar is dubbed the F.A.S.T (Fast Adjust Spring Technology), and it makes adjusting spring height much less of a hassle.

Like the early shock that Gavin Gracyk was running, the current Podium shock features separate low and high speed damping adjusters, as well as a bottom-out control. Neezer was happy to mention, “All adjustments have 24 clicks, even the high-speed adjuster. I think one thing you’ll notice is that you can really feel the adjustments. One of our philosophies is to give you adjustments that really do something.”

The bottom-out circuit was particularly interesting, and there was plenty for Everet to explain. “Deep in the shock travel a piston (at the end of the shock shaft) comes into the bottom-out circuit. It’s got a one-degree taper, so it enters pretty softly, and in about the last half-inch of travel, it’s fully in the bottom out cup. It only affects the end of the stroke. You can adjust that, but your beginning stroke small chop stuff, and mid-stroke is not affected by that at all. It’s position-sensitive. As this piston is going in, some oil is going past it, and some oil is passed through the bottom-out circuit, which is controlled by a needle which is adjustable from the exterior. When the needle’s fully close, all the oil is going past the piston, and it’s a really stiff bottom-out control. We never run it fully closed, but you can really feel it. As you back it off, you get your bleed flow. Let’s say that you were to close this off. You hit a chuckhole on the backside of a jump, you’re pretty close to bottom out, and you have that big event. We also have a blow-off circuit here, which opens up at 1500 PSI. So it’s like a safety circuit. If we didn’t have that, it’d be really harsh if you were to have that event. So there are three passages…around the piston, through the bottom-out circuit, and through the blow-off.”

This cutaway will help you understand how the bottom-out system works. Click image for a larger version.

“The bottom-out piston centers itself and floats, so it’s guided into the port. Then on retraction it lifts off, and oil flows back through the piston. That’s how we prevent any cavitation. The piston is a 7075 high-flow piston, and we’ve spent lots of time porting the flow paths through it. It’s a very clean oil path. It’s very expensive, but in our experience we get big performance gains here. We’ve got exotic materials to prevent fade so when the shock does heat up it expands a certain amount to prevent oil leakage. That’s something that was very important to us, making it as fade-free as possible.”

“The other advantage that we have with this bottom-out control, is that deep into the travel it comes into effect, and that allows us to run a much bumper than a stock shock. The advantage there is that a stock shock needs that bumper to absorb energy and prevent a harsh bottom out. Then you have all that energy stored, and it can be tricky to control the rebound action. Because we’re dissipating that energy in the bottom-out circuit, instead of the bumper, we’re able to optimize the rebound damping. With this system, you bottom out and get into the hydraulics, but the hydraulics do not push the shock back out. They absorb that energy and turn it into heat, and it gets dissipated through the body of the shock.”

The Podium uses a much shorter bottom-out bumper than most stock shocks. But you might also notice fewer kicks on rebound.

Neezer noted, “A pretty common comment we’ve heard in testing is, ‘The bike works awesome, except for on that one flat landing. It’s bottoming out.’ In the old days we’d be like, ‘Well, we can add some compression, and it might screw you up in the turns or acceleration bumps.’ Now, that bottom out adjuster’s beautiful, because you can just put that in a couple clicks and not worry about how it’s going to turn. It’s really nice to isolate those circuits. “

The reservoir on the Podium shock is also somewhat different in that it has a floating piston, rather than a bladder. Everet explained, “Even though the outside of the reservoir looks similar to a stock shock, because we don’t have a thick bladder, we’ve optimized the floating piston for nitrogen, we have about twice the volume. Because we have twice the oil volume, the pressure stays much more consistent.”

They also have some nice details like Teflon-lined hardened race spherical bearings on either end, which helps for misalignment. There’s also a cap that prevents wandering fingers from accidentally discharging the nitrogen, and it also helps prevent hot exhausts from overheating the valve. And finally, there’s a cool troubleshooting feature. The low-speed adjuster detents are energized by the nitrogen, so if the shock starts feeling like it’s not working right, you can check your low-speed adjuster. If there are no detents, you’ve lost the nitrogen in the reservoir.

The shock shaft had a DLC coating, and there’s also a proprietary coating on the interior of the shock body. Fox has made use of the extensive plating work developed on the stanchions of the mountain bike forks and shocks to enhance their moto gear, which makes for a cool crossover of technology.

The Fox guys were happy to note that when it comes to suspension tuning, the compression and rebound circuits are completely separate. Neezer said, “You can monkey around with the rebound all day long and know you’re not changing the feel of the compression. Don’t be afraid of the adjusters go all the way in. Go do that lap. Is it better? Or worse? Then go all the way out. Is that better? Or worse? Somewhere you’re going to get an idea of which way you need to go if you’re totally confused. Usually you’re bracketing back to the sweet spot.”

So what do one of these shocks go for? How about $899 plus the spring, for $999 total.

Forks

If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll recognize the Fox Factory Forx, and back when they were first introduced, they were amazing, partly for their 44mm tubes, which was much larger than the stock forks at the time. Fox has had fork cartridges for minis for the last few years, but they’re also working on a return to suspension tuning for full-size bike with a service dubbed Pro Tune.

Check out these cool prototype fork caps. We dig 'em.

There will be three levels of service available, with level one being a simple revalve. Level two gets interesting with some different coatings available, a cool new top cap (check the photo), and a revalve. For level three, they’re in the testing stages of a cartridge design based on some new technology. Currently they’re looking at modifying existing forks, rather than producing their own fork. But would it be out of the question for them to do it? Judging by what we’ve seen them do in other markets? Not at all.

The fork caps are particularly interesting. The levers make for easy adjustments, even with gloves on. When quizzed about why there were two bleed holes in the cap, they had an easy answer. When you’re making oil height adjustments, and trying to add oil it’s a bear to try and get it in, while air is also venting out of the cap. The second hole acts as a vent. Simple.

All of the fork stuff is too far into the future for info on pricing, etc. But as soon as we have additional information, we’ll let you know.

Warren Johnson, flying the Podium RC3 through its paces.

That’s it for now. We were impressed with the design and thought that went into all the products in the Fox Racing Shox lineup, and we’ll give you more info on the Fox Podium RC3 (along with a full video) after we’ve had time for more thorough testing.