Mountain Biking - MARZOCCHI MX Comp coil vs MX Comp ETA...which?

Ok so whats the difference in performance and function between these two? I know that the mx comp coil has coil springs on both sides of the fork and the comp eta has a coil on one side and only air on the other. But whats the difference? I mean whats the purpose of both and how do both compare?

I'm curious.
Well ok I wanna know just in case I get some extra money and I want to upgrade from my sucky gila t5. :|

Ok so whats the difference in performance and function between these two? I know that the mx comp coil has coil springs on both sides of the fork and the comp eta has a coil on one side and only air on the other. But whats the difference? I mean whats the purpose of both and how do both compare?

I'm curious.
Well ok I wanna know just in case I get some extra money and I want to upgrade from my sucky gila t5. :|
I'm guessing you've got a Hardrock? Nevermind. :p

As far as I know, the MX Comp ETA has lockout. That's about it, but a friend of my at the LBS highly reccomended it. :)

Which would pick for a heavy guy....a comp coil? That way both sides has springs? And whats lockout anyway?

Which would pick for a heavy guy....a comp coil? That way both sides has springs? And whats lockout anyway?
I suppose if you changed the springs in either then they should both be fine. Lockout is when if you press a button/flip this lockout lever thing then the fork has no travel and acts like a rigid fork. (I think several forks have 30mm even when locked out for "safety")

I'd go for the ETA, but I'm pretty sure the Comp Coil would be nice aswell.

The forks are externally identical. They have the same sliders, steerer, and stanchion tubes. As you correctly said, the ETA has a coil on one side and air+ETA on the other. The ETA limits travel to, I believe, 30mm, when activated. To activate it, you twist a knob on the top of the left leg (again, this is all from memory when I was looking at forks).

I eventually went with an MX Comp Coil because of one thing: The manual states you should NEVER descend with the ETA locked out. For me, that's just not feasible. My local terrain changes so fast that I would spend the entire ride locking and unlocking the ETA OR I'd never use it. With that in mind, I went with the MX Comp Coil.

The nice thing I later found out is that the 2004 Comp Coil and 2004 Comp Air are exactly the same fork. If you remove the springs and spacers from the Comp Coil, it's a Comp Air. I verified this with an email from Marzocchi and they confirmed that removing the springs and running higher air pressure wouldn't even void the warranty.

So I run an MX Comp Air now. My goal was to mimic the feel of my old Rock Shox Mag 21 and the Comp Air at around 42psi does it. At $180, it was a sweet deal and I LOVE the fork.

The ETA? Only cause of the lockout? Besides the lockout how else are they different?

The ETA? Only cause of the lockout? Besides the lockout how else are they different?

I think that's it. In fact, you can convert each of the three (Coil, Air, and ETA) back and forth with the right parts.

Buy an Air, add springs (and spacers) and it's a Coil.
Buy a Coil, remove one spring, add ETA cartridge and it's an ETA.
Buy an ETA, remove all the insides, and it's an air.

Once I saw that you shouldn't descend with the ETA locked out, I stopped researching it but you may want to shoot off an email to Marzocchi. They responded to me in about 2 days.

As far as I know, the lockout is on the handlebars so all you'd have to do is move your finger and click. At least that's what my friend, who's got a 2005 MX Comp ETA, said. :)

As far as I know, the lockout is on the handlebars so all you'd have to do is move your finger and click. At least that's what my friend, who's got a 2005 MX Comp ETA, said. :)

They must have changed it for 2005 then. When I was looking at the 2004, I'm pretty sure they didn't have a remote lockout feature. Again, though, I stopped considering the ETA before I dug too deep into it.