Mastodon Pro - Gen 3

I've had my Salsa Fattie for three years now. Thought this year I'd upgrade the rigid fork that came with the bike with a Mastodon Gen 3. First impressions were really good, easy setup. Made me wonder why I waited so long! Highly recommend this fork.

In winter\fat riding culture this is the only fork you can ride. Everything else is magnitude behind lol. This is my 2nd year on high end suspension and discovering Manitou was like discovering well hidden secret. This thing is butter smooth even at -20 C ( coldest I took my bike out). It turned my fatty into hard chagrining hard tail. Some people will say it's overkill, winter rides are mellower - yeah, but it's nice to have this monster when conditions get rougher. It's a luxury item and comes with solid weigh penalty over carbon fork. But I converted my wheels into tubeless and basically only ended up adding 1.2 KG on my bike. A lot by roadie standards but I don't feel it.

I am mostly impressed with Manitou tech. Adjustable travel at home with few tools but no extra parts is an awesome option, everyone should do it. Assembly quality is best I've seen, my fork was well lubed ( not too too much), with proper oil amounts, smooth out of the box, everything aligned and etc. Top notch QC and assembly ( this is important because 50% of my high end suspension products from big F and R came and went straight to warranty). I also appreciate detailed user manuals and graphic service manual. This thing is easy to work on for medium skilled home mechanic.

When shopping next time I will def be considering other Manitou components first.

Casting improvements are nice, both the brake line attachment and the lowers, which are now more like Mezzer Pro. Better travel options. This fork really needs a coil spring though, with relatively radical temp changes, you have to frequently adjust it and in the winter with gloves on, you don't want to be pulling out a pump and especially not having to turn the bike upside down (because packed snow trails are narrow). It's not like other forks where you can just fill up and then "bleed down" to the right trail pressure, since the attachment is on the bottom. Another issue is warm (like inside) to cold means the negative spring will suck the fork down, so again you have to attach the pump because there's no negative spring equalization port. Lastly, the 2.8mm seal at the end of the spring stanchion will fail about 1x/season, also sucking the fork down. On my FS fatbike, the rear shock is a coil, it's always ready to go, doesn't care about conditions, etc. As a fatbike fork marketed for the cold, this really needs a coil spring.