Over the past four years, Rockshox has made major strides in reducing friction, improving spring rates, and making their mountain bike suspension forks both plush and supportive. These changes came incrementally over several model years, first with Charger 2.1, then a revised air spring design, followed by a DebonAir airspring in their forks.
Now, they’re revising the internals yet again, introducing new damper and air spring designs, and changing the chassis and model org chart, all at once. The goal? Even better forks, of course, and a lot of the new tech transfers to new rear shocks, too!
2023 Rockshox Pike, Lyrik & ZEB
The changes come for the Pike, Lyrik and ZEB forks. Until now, these models’ travel ranges have overlapped, with the Pike being everything from a light trail up to full trail model, and the Lyrik stepping in along the way to take things a bit further before the ZEB made sense.
Now, the Pike is limited to 120-140mm travel, the Lyrik handles 140-160, and the ZEB handles 160-190mm travel. No more overlap, but with the option to move to a burlier option at the top end of the travel range.
This let Rockshox optimize the chassis, damper, and air spring for a very narrow range, rather than having to overbuild one or add range for another. Conveniently, this new range picks up right where the SID SL (100mm) and SID (120mm) forks leave off, giving Rockshox very specific models for every category of bike.
Internally, the big changes are:
- Charger 3 damper with truly independent High Speed Compression (HSC) and Low Speed Compression (LSC) adjustments
- Silent rebound damping
- ButterCups to dampen high-frequency vibrations
- DebonAir+ air springs for a consistent feel across all three fork platforms
- Pressure Relief Valves eliminate unwanted air pressure build-up in the fork lower leg
- Maxima Plush Dynamic Suspension Lube
New Rockshox Charger 3 Damper tech
There are two big changes to the Charger damper – independent high- and low-speed compression damping, and a coil-sprung IFP.
We’ll start with the IFP (Internal Floating Piston), because it’s a key part of making the new damper work. Recently, Rockshox has used a bladder-based (Charger 2.1 RC) damper in their higher end forks. And a bladder based solution is great at keeping air and oil from mixing, but doesn’t do as much to push the oil back through the rebound circuit (which maintains proper back pressure to prevent cavitation) – it’s more sucked back through, which gives you that squishy sound. This design eliminates the squishy sound.
RELATED: Read more about bladder vs IFP damping in our Suspension Tech articles.
With an IFP, they can build a bleeder port into the IFP, so if seals wear out and allow a small amount of lower leg lubrication fluid, and any excess fluid can purge itself through that port. And it doesn’t really matter if they mix a bit, Rockshox has tested that specifically and the damping fluid and lubrication oil are the same weight, but… if you maintain your 200-hour service intervals, all of this is basically a non-issue.

So, what is “Low” versus “High” speed compression?
Soften up, ButterCups
What’s new in the DebonAir+ air spring?
All-new purpose-built lowers
