Campag4life

What other conclusion can a sensible bike buyer make. Nobody wants to spend 3 grand and have a finicky bike. Many endurance road bike riders ride them a bit rough and tumble in different terrain and want something that can take a pounding. I have said before, that Specialized missed the mark with this design. It happens every day in any product line from automobiles to cell phones.

That said, there are others here that love their FS and have had 0 issues. It comes down to the build tolerance of their bike and likely how they ride it. As mentioned, the environment in the UK is a far cry from Southern Cal. A 250 lb rider with 3 inches of drop is going to load the shock a lot more than a 130 lb guy with saddle the same as bar height. Some ride in the rain a couple of times a week. Some never ride in the rain...I rarely do for example...maybe once every 4 months I am caught in it.

Conditions vary, bikes from the factory vary and riders vary. A nuance of good design is, a good design is robust enough to encompass all this variability. Look at the difficult environment for a wheel bearing on an automobile. In spite of their metallurgy, high tolerances and build quality, they still sometimes make noise and fail and require replacement. FS falls in line here. Perhaps greater integrity will be built into future future shocks 'if' Spesh sticks with the design. They have abandoned designs before like the carbon OSBB which was a disaster of a bottom bracket they sold 'only on their highest end S-works bikes'.