RockShox Revelation 426 U-Turn review

It might not be a new fork, but this multiple test winner is still the best trail fork around in 2008.

The fact that the Revelation has been around for several years now with no major changes might put some fashion followers off, but you’d be stupid to ignore such a proven unit. Okay, so you might have to run adaptors to match the old-school IS mounts with some of the latest brakes, but otherwise this hasn’t been fixed because it has never broken.

In fact, despite relentlessly testing loads of Revelations ourselves and interrogating other users, we could barely find a single blemish on the fork’s exemplary ‘super reliable, easy life’ record.

It’s not just a reliable fork, it’s also a really good suspension unit. The opposed positive and negative air springs let you balance ride height, overall spring response and starting sensitivity pretty much perfectly between plush traction Hoover to relatively pert.

The adjustable ‘Floodgate’ compression damping lets you run a full racer’s lock, or effectively use the lockout lever as just a low level ‘platform’ to stop braking or cornering dive. RockShox alson has the best remote control ‘PopLoc’ switches in the business, making handlebar-based operation a breeze.

The intuitive U-Turn travel adjust is smooth enough to use while you’re riding, and lets you tune the ride height to within a couple of millimetres of your ideal. Tidemarks on the legs take the guesswork or click-counting out of how much travel you’re actually running.

If you really start to hammer the Revelation down long, rocky, rutted, stepped descents you can start to cause hiccups and indigestion in the Motion Control damping, but 90 percent of the time it’s more than fine. Considering that this is one of the lighter forks here, steering accuracy and general point-and-shoot precision are very good.

As we say, from a reliability point of view we’ve never had a single problem with a Revelation. While they’re not as cheap compared with the competition as when they were first introduced, we still reckon they’re excellent value for such proven toughness.