Review: EXT's New Storia V4 Coil Shock

Every Storia is custom built based on the bike it's going on, and the tune factors in rider weight and riding style. That customization does come at a price, to the tune of $1,069 USD for the shock, and $130 USD for the spring. The shock is covered by a five year warranty, as long as it's maintained yearly.



Features

While many of the changes to the Storia are refinements, there is one entirely new feature – PSR. That stands for position sensitive rebound, and it's intended to keep the shock from having any noticeable topout. It works via a one way valve that kicks in during the last 2 millimeters of extension, preventing any annoying knocks when the shock returns to its starting position.

Hyraulic bottom out designs are becoming more common in coil shocks (RockShox and Push have shocks with this feature), but EXT beat them both to the punch years ago. For this iteration, it starts in the last 15% of the stroke, and the amount of resistance can be increased to a higher level than before. The Storia does have a bottom out bumper, but it's about as small as you can get; it's there to avoid any metal on metal contact rather than actually absorbing any impacts – that's what the HBC feature is for.

While some bikes can get away with running a coil shock without a climb switch, on others it's a very handy feature to have. The Storia's Lok 2.0 climb switch is shim based, which means the level of firmness that the lever provides when it's flipped into the closed position is customizable. Some customers may want a nearly rigid feeling bike, while others might want a little more traction. If you do forget to flip the lever to open before descending, there's a blow off valve that prevents any of the internals from being damaged.

The Storia now uses a bladder in the reservoir instead of an internal floating piston to handle the oil that's displaced as the shock compresses. This allows for a slightly smaller reservoir size than the previous version. That bladder is pressurized to just 55 psi in order to keep the shock nice and supple on small bumps. There's also a new oil with a high viscosity index inside the shock that's meant to be highly resistant to foaming and remain stable at a wide range of temperatures.



Setup

The Storia V4 was installed on a Raaw Madonna, which has been serving as my test sled for several different coil shocks this season. I started with a 450 lb spring, which put me at 30% sag, but later switched to a 475 in order to get a little more support – that did the trick, reducing the sag slightly, and I stuck with that spring rate for the remainder of the test.

My final settings for my 160 lb weight ended up being 9 clicks of LSC, 9 clicks of HSC, and 9 clicks of rebound, all counted from closed. Those are within a click or two of EXT's recommended starting point, and I still had plenty of range to go in either direction. For the hydraulic bottom out, I set that at 5 clicks from closed (out of a total of 10).

Testing took place in the Whistler Bike Park, and on the trails around Bellingham, Washington, which meant I was able to ride the shock on everything from high speed brake bumps to softer, steeper trails.


Performance

The Storia has more of an energetic nature, as opposed to feeling super-plush and glued to the ground. At least, that's the case with the tune that I was running and my setup. It's very sensitive off the top without feeling too mushy, and then deeper in the travel it does a great job of absorbing hits and returning to full travel. It felt good at slower speeds, but it was on those faster sections of trail where it really started to shine – at times it was as if there was a little voice in my head encouraging me to stay off the brakes and let it take the edge off the brake bumps and chattery bits of trail in the bike park as quickly as possible.

One sensation that I wasn't able to totally eliminate was a slight bit of harshness when landing larger jumps or drops. That initial impact, when the rear wheel first hits the ground after being airborne, was more noticeable than I'd expected. I experimented with different compression and hydraulic bottom out settings, but nothing seemed to completely remove it. The rest of the stroke felt well damped, and I never felt like I was getting deflected off line after landing, but I'd say the Ohlins TTX22 and RockShox Vivid Coil both do a better job of taking the sting out of that initial touchdown.

The hydraulic bottom out works as advertised, and there’s enough range to really ramp things up if you’re consistently hitting extra-large features and want all of the bottom out prevention. For me, a little less than halfway through the range was the sweet spot - I could still make use of the shock’s travel, without feeling like I was hitting a wall towards the end of the stroke.

The Storia is noticeably quieter than the previous version – that bottom of a milkshake slurping sound is much, much less apparent. The shock isn't totally silent (the new RockShox Vivid is the quietest coil shock I've been on recently), but I don't have any complaints about the noise level, and I'm pretty sensitive to bike sounds.

That new anti-topout feature is an excellent addition – I hate feeling the 'clunk' of a fork or shock topping out, and that never occurred with the Storia V4.

The climb switch works great too. It is a little harder to activate on the Raaw, since it's tucked behind the rocker link in the open position, but it firms things up nicely for those logging road slogs. I did forget to open in up before dropping into a jump line, so I was able to give that emergency blowoff feature a good test (it works), but it was definitely too firm for me to want to continue my run in that setting.

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Pinkbike's Take

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Reviews and Tech Reviews Shocks Extreme Racing Shox Ext Storia