Brand X Ascend dropper post

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

So I accidentally a Brand X dropper from CRC (currently £109.99). Bit of a punt but I keep on looking at droppers for the Whyte and keep being put off by the stupid prices and fact that the Reverbs appear to have some fairly major flaws. Will have a play with it when it arrives and report back. 

[forteh]

I don't get why people are having their reverb posts fail? Mine is 4 years old now, no service yet and no major issues. A little air has leaked by the ifp causing it to sag by a couple of mm but that's a pretty easy fix.

That said there are a lot of reputedly very reliable droppers out there now.

[BJ.]

49 minutes ago, forteh said:

A little air has leaked by the ifp causing it to sag by a couple of mm but that's a pretty easy fix.

 

This is the issue everyone is having with the first generation of the reverb. Basically what happens is if it gets knocked side ways air leaks into the oil chamber and oil into the air causing the post to drop slightly. If the post was under 2 years old sram tech would replace it with a new one free of charge. 

If you send your post back to them however for a service they replace the problematic piston inside with the new redesigned rubber one which is the only internal difference on the mk2. 

 

Edited October 16, 2016 by BJ.

[Danny]

Are mk2's ok now then? I was looking at a reverb as it seems like the defacto standard dropper even though theres loads of issues.

[forteh]

IIRC there's the Mk1 type A (silver seal head collar), Mk1 type B (black seal head collar), then there have been a couple of iterations of the Mk2 with revisions to the ifp as Brad pointed out.  Then of course you have the stealth vs external routing.

I have an external Mk1B and other than a leak past the ifp has been great.  Recently I thought the seal head bush had died as it was getting a bit sticky, undoing it, liberally applying sram butter to the DU bush and wiper before tightening it back down has made a big difference - unsuprising considering it's 4 years old now and that's the only maintenance I've carried out.

At some point I will open it up and reset the ifp, imho it's not worth the 85 quid to pay someone else to do it when the seal kit is a tenner!

[Danny]

I'll be looking to get one after winter so i will make sure its a mk2 stealth.

[Brisa]

I had an early prototype of the Ascend on my bike for around 6 months of winter abuse on a hardtail. I was nothing but impressed with it and so were the other guys who had one too. I've my own shop now and won't hesitate to sell one to any of my customers.

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

The post arrived today (well it arrived yesterday with Parcel Farce delivering it to a neighbour without bothering to let me know this... checked the tracking this afternoon to see that it had been delivered and thankfully my neighbour came round as I was about to start doing the rounds of the other houses in the road!). Just got it installed and so far it's looking good. Everything feels like good quality and is nice and solid. Easy to set up (hardest part was routing the cable through the rubber grommets in the frame and getting those seated nicely again) and in action feels really smooth with a nice light lever action. Time will tell on reliability but so far so good.