Right now there is a lot of good forks on the market and Manitou has been playing second fiddle for the last few seasons. They have really stepped their game to offer the Mezzer Pro which we think is on par with feeling and performance with other brands, plus you get another level of fork tuning which other brands are lacking. Regardless of your weight or riding style you can really get deep into tuning the air spring to perform exactly how you want it. Its also one of the lightest air forks out there and also the stiffest.
Firstly Manitou has the Dorado Air spring which uses a unique balancing valve to balance negative and postitive chambers to smooth out the stroke and give a level of customisation to riders of all weights.
Infinite Rate Tune (IRT) allows for another vector of spring tuning(like on-the-trail volume adjuster but better) by adjusting air pressure in the beginning and end stroke, what this allows you to do is set the main air spring lower for improved small bump while still maintaining mid-stroke support for more aggressive end-stroke ramp up. There is a lot of range and you can really go from mild to wild in terms of progressiveness. It is pretty high-tech and works extremely well and the best part no more opening up your fork stuffing in volume spacers.
On paper setup might look tricky with 3 air chambers, but this is how you get your baseline.
Fill the IRT to 50% of your weight in lbs and then fill the bottom valve to 1/3 of your weight in lbs. Then make your fine tuning adjustments from there. Easy.
The damping cartridge features Manitous MC2 technology which provides independent high speed compression with adjustable high speed blow off point and a low speed circuit that maintains chassis control and small bump sensitivity. It's a bladder design with a blow off valve to prevent rupture under high pressure and to maintain consistent smooth damping on hot runs. The hydraulic bottom out which works in the last 25-30mm travel takes the edge of big hits and is far superior to the material bump stops in almost all other forks. High speed big hitting rock gardens is where the Mezzer Pro starts to shine, it feels controlled and smooth and there is none of that jarring shock at the end of the travel - exactly where you don't be thrown off line!
Travel can be changed easily with the internal spacers. There a lots of extra little details that you probably haven't seen on other forks that tell you the engineers though about everything - like the small bleed screws that allow you to evacuate pressure build up in lowers.
- 2,032 grams / 2,000g (27.5)
- 140-180mm (Internally adjustable in 10mm increments)
- IRT Pressure, Rebound, HS and LS compression
- Hydraulic bottom out
- 37mm diameter legs
- Includes bolt on flexible fender
- 29 (44mm offset) / 27.5 (37mm offset)