I find a large socket works just as well as the seal tool. as long as you find a socket that fits inside the fork without crushing the inside lip of the seal at the same time there really isn't much gain to the specialized tool.

On the note of not selling your gear or bike every season you should have extra steer tube there for adjustment. Look at all the pro's on the DH circuit on really steep tracks they raise their bar height and only small amounts of height increase can be achieved through direct mount spacers if you are lucky enough to have access to properly made ones or stem selection it self. Both those options cost money to have on hand. If you want to raise the bar height by more then 5-6mm you are going to need that extra steer tube.And further more my message had nothing to do with having the latest and greatest. If you are lucky enough to keep all your previous bikes good for you but it doesn't mean some 16 year old kid that had to get a job to get his bike can afford to hold on to every bike he will ever own. I get your point but i don't appreciate you detracting from the importance of my message. The reason i posted this was for the younger riders out there that are not fortunate enough to be able to keep all their previous rides and so they don't make the mistake of short changing themselves in the future.

Ridgeline you nailed it. And that's exactly how moto tires are already the side wall is lower.. the psi is at like 12-16.. and the rim is wider. with current tires the folding over issue would decrease with a wider rim but too much profile and angle of attack is lost . Also papapendrel I ride both enduro and moto as well mountain bikes. I used to work as a mechanic in the industry and race in all disciplines. I know a thing or 2 and i can tell you there a 100 kids in whistler below the age of 16 that can lean a bike hard enough to achieve the circumstances i spoke of and the weight difference is addressed in scale in this issue. A dirt bike alone weighs 250lbs and even though the tire casings are built to be stiffer on scale to a mtb tire standing still when you get one up past 60kph the rotational mass that is generated by a tire that is that much heavier to begin with gives it quite a bit of flex in a corner. With all the rotating parts of a dirt bike you go from a 250lb bike with a 200lb rider kitted out on top at a stand still to the equivalent of probably in the 600lb range over the contact patches of the tires when running at speed. the rotational mass is the only thing keeping the tires centered and from flexing beyond control not to mention they run at a lot lower psi also allowing them to flex quite a bit. the flex issue and generation of energy that can be released at the break away point in traction for tires in both sports is of very similar science and math just on different scales.

There should be a large print disclaimer towards the top explaining the down side to cutting a steer tube to an exact height. It looks nice and functions just as well as having the steer tube come all the way through the stem but it will make reselling the fork or even the bike as a whole more difficult and will most likely impact the price you can get on the used market. like the bike he is installing it on i would consider to be a on the short side of head tube lengths for frames manufactured in the past 2-3 years and even on that bike he has not left enough steer tube to adjust the bar height for a possible future owner.

In terms of DH application of this theory it demands a balancing point to be achieved with rider preference there is too wide and too narrow. Yes a wider rim means a flatter profile. And yes that gives you good straight line traction. BUT it doesn't always mean better cornering traction. At high speed you will do 2 things when leaning a bike in to a turn with a tire that has a flat lateral profile. 1 you will have a reduced range of angle in relationship to to the surface the tire is on do to the flatter profile having less roll. Now for those of you who would say well i doubt many people achieve that kind of lean in a corner well fine there is my 2nd point to come. 2 With a flatter profile the tire will break traction much harsher under hard cornering because its like winding up a spring. with the "improved" traction at a now more limited angle of attack you are going to break traction latter once you have built up more energy in the side wall of the tire which makes it a less predictable and much harsher break-away-point. With all that said there is a reason that Dirt Bikes have a rounded profiles to there tires and they have offroad racing history all the way back to the 60's. Do they really think they have figured something out that motocross hasn't already.

Some of the comments about how much lower the price of other WC level rigs are i totally agree with but there is no way to effectively bring down the price of this bike. The problem with its price tag doesn't fall on the small Components it falls on just 3 things: the frame, shock, and fork. Both suspension pieces are unique to this bike and there for made in small batches increasing cost. The fork and shock have custom valving and the fork has an adjustable air assist that no other 40 will have during 2012. And the frame is $4200 alone. Suggesting that downgrading the brakes and so on would make a big enough dent to bring it down to $6500 is silly. They buy those components in bulk and included them into a complete bike's price tag at a huge discount. if you were to downgrade all the small stuff outside of the big 3 pieces i mentioned you would only be looking at $1000 savings at the absolute most. I just don't see this bike getting cheaper unless the air assist in the 40 becomes standard in all Fox 40's and the price tag for the frame is lowered. The rear shock is probably the only reasonably priced custom component for this bike (lots of manufactures do go that route). To give you a comparison take the Demo II at 6600 complete wc build and a frame only price of $2650. When you do the math you are getting the brakes and so on at the same price point as other manufactures.

I give them mad Props and they have to have huge nuts to do it but if the way the jump is set up in the photo is how they plan on doing it I don't think its nearly as impressive as previous distance records. Before i get negative 5000 on this hear me out. A lot of records are recorded by where the rider or driver lands and not the lip to landing distance. So go back to other jumps made, take the redbull tour of Australia back in NWD 5 i believe (the year before Nathan Rennie set his record). With no prep they took a moto ramp, that was super steep built for tricking, in someone's back lot lined it up with a dirt landing that was under 25feet long and reached out to something like the 80 foot mark. that takes precision and balls. you only get a 5 foot margin of error on the landing. here they have what looks to be out to 60 feet from the top of the landing before they land to flat and the top of the landing in the photo sits before even the BMX record mark at about 100 feet. Not saying i would do it, not saying its not impressive, but i am saying the records made before will remain more impressive to me even if they do in fact set a new one here.

Its always hard to get suspension just right. In this case I think the solution would have been to turn in the bottom out adjust to make the chamber smaller then set the pressure to same as it was with the the previous, more open, chamber position that had nice small bump/beginning-stroke compliance. Reasoning for this is that if you have the same air pressure but a smaller chamber your more likely to maintain the initial stroke feel but have a firmer and faster ramp up at the end of the stroke. Not claiming to solve there problem with setting it up completely but if your trying to improve end stroke without having negative effects on the beginning stroke feel its a good place to start. I would personally disagree with increasing high speed compression and adding more air to the shock. those 2 setting changes target both the beginning and ending instead of targeting the problem directly. I would add though you may have ultimately needed to add air pressure depending how easily you were bottoming out. However the simplest way to address the problem on the trail would have been to add a click or 2 of low speed compression. From the problem described the high speed compression should have been a last resort choice for addressing the problem.