Showa SFF Air Works Suspension & Triple Air Chamber (TAC)

 

Japanese Suspension Company (Showa) has made another major breakthrough in Motocross suspension technology with their latest development of air forks. In the past steel or titanium springs have been used for linear damping of forces that are exposed to a dirt bike's front forks. Using metal springs has been a reliable and effective way of damping kinetic force since the genesis of suspension in general. But now a newer, more advanced way of damping has been recently developed that offers advantages over its spring counterpart that blows them out of the water in terms of performance, adjustability, comfort, and ease of maintenance. Normally conventional front forks on a dirt bike have two metal springs in each fork leg that provide the linear damping of forces exerted on the front wheel of the bike. But in order to stay ahead of the competition and continue evolving technology, Showa came up with a revolutionary way of designing front forks on modern motocross bikes. They called it SFF, and the way it works is instead of having two springs in each fork there is only one spring in one fork and the other fork has only the shims and valving in it while the spring only fork leg has only the main damping spring and some oil in it, hence the name Separate Function Fork. This design offers 25% less friction, increased adjustability such as front preload adjustment to control the ride height of the front end, less parts so better reliability and less weight which is what race teams always strive to achieve. But Showa refuses to stop there and so they made the regular SFF design only a transitory, significant upgrade and raised the level even further with the latest development of motocross suspension, which is classified as the SFF AIR Works Suspension. The separate function air forks work in the same way the normal SFF front forks do except there is no springs at all used as main linear damping. Instead the spring side of the SFF fork is modified allowing two nitrogen chambers to be sealed inside the fork replacing the previous heavy metal spring with lightweight inert gas that is very consistent under temperature changes outside. The advantage here of using the SFF AIR over the normal SFF is that it saves roughly three whole pounds in the front end of the bike, has a more progressive feel throughout the whole stroke of the fork, has better feedback and traction for the terrain because it takes less damping pressures and rates to achieve the same level of performance and force damping because it takes less weight to hold the actual components of the fork up under load. This allows the rider to run a softer suspension setting but still have the same level of bottoming resistance as before that previously required a stiffer valving setup. Again this possible because the inner damping cartridge can now be made larger in the nitrogen side of the fork leg because it doesn't have to be small enough to fit in between the old metal spring that was used in the old system. Unfortunately if you are not a factory sponsored rider the exotic and revolutionary Showa SFF AIR Suspension is going to cost you a quite a bit of money, around $10,000 dollars to be exact. The reason for this is the suspension is only sold to the general public in the form of what is called A-Kit Suspension. The A-Kit comes with the matching rear shock as well as the front forks. Both the shock and the forks are CNC Machined instead of being caste molded and offer the latest in surface coatings such as Kashima coatings, Titanium Nitride or Diamond Like Carbon coatings that reduce suspension performance fade from heat buildup, increase reliability, and reduce sliding surface friction by a very high factor. The A-Kit Forks also require the purchase of works CNC Machined triple clamps to accommodate the 49mm lower fork tubes which are 1mm larger than OEM production lower front fork tubes that come stock on your Motocross bike which in turn makes the upper fork tubes much larger than stock upper fork tubes. Showa has recently upgraded their line of SFF AIR Works Suspension with the addition of the SFF AIR Works Triple Air Chamber Suspension. The SFF AIR Works Triple Air Chamber Suspension is currently only available to select factory 450 teams because it is currently in an ongoing prototype development phase but will soon be available to the general public through Pro Circuit once it reaches into production phase and is also currently the best motocross suspension on the face of the earth period. The Showa SFF AIR Works Triple Air Chamber Suspension is basically the same as its normal counterpart with the edition of a third nitrogen reservoir on the right fork lug that acts as a pressurized nitrogen piggyback top-out spring, and regulates the spring rate for only the very bottom portion of the fork stroke to maximize and enhance to the highest degree, the bottoming resistance of the front forks and to regulate the extending speed of the front fork when the front wheel is in the air, which in turn essentially enables the rider to run a supple, soft fork setting that handles high frequency bumps and chomp on the track with minimal feedback on the rider's arms, but still enables the rider to full on case 150+ foot jumps and absorb the impact like the event never even took place. The Showa SFF AIR Works Triple Air Chamber Suspension is another step forward to achieving the ultimate suspension where the suspension is capable of absorbing any type of obstacle on the track with 100% efficiency and precision allowing the rider to have the sensation that they are riding on a pillow or cloud as if the bumps where never there because of the technological leaps taken to develop true compliant, progressive suspension.