 Since AirForks were launched to market, the community was really reluctant to embrace the change. And ever since, the question remained, AirForks or SpringForks? Stay tuned to finally wrap your head around AirForks. WP's IairForks have been on the market for a while now and are a really good benchmark to understand the pros and cons of AirForks. If you don't know how SpringForks work, I strongly recommend you to take a look at the basics of suspensions and how frontforks work before you get into this topic. If SpringForks are so good, which they are, why change what's not broken? Short answer, weight saving. The weight of two steel springs adds up if you are going after ultimate performance. But if you don't have steel springs, what do you have? You guessed it, air. As opposed to oil, air is compressible and when you compress pressurized air in a closed chamber, it will work the same way as a linear rate spring. A set of AirForks is made of two legs with different functions. One for damping, with a larger traditional closed cartridge, but with no metal spring. And on the other leg, there is a pneumatic cartridge only responsible for the sprung weight. On top of the fork, there is only one valve to set the air pressure for the weight of the rider, nothing else. On the side and near the bottom of the cartridge, there is an outer groove with about 18mm. The piston inside the cartridge separates the cartridge in two chambers. The top one is the main air chamber and will provide the spring behavior of a metal spring. The chamber below the piston is the balanced chamber. If the balanced chamber wasn't pressurized, the fork would have a really harsh feel like if it had a lot of preload. So how the hell can one valve set the pressure of two chambers? This is where simplicity meets innovation. After setting the right air pressure with the bike on the stand, the air pressure on the main chamber will make the forks fully extend. The piston seal will sit on the groove, allowing an air bypass between the chambers. This will not only equalize the air pressure between the main chamber and the balanced chamber, providing plushness on the initial part of the stroke, but it will also eliminate the need for a second pressurized chamber, increasing reliability. Clever stuff! Let's understand how these chambers work throughout the whole suspension travel. Once the rider is on the bike, the piston seals both chambers and the reduced main air chamber provides the forks holdup. On deeper compressions, the main chamber gets smaller and the increased air pressure provides the resisting force that increases at a linear rate according to the compressed travel. While this happens, the damping leg will provide a controlled resisting force according to the speed of compression. After the compression stroke, the air pressure on the main chamber will make the forks extend and the damping leg will provide a controlled extension. At the end of the extension stroke, the air bypass will once more show its worth and will prevent the fork from topping out by equalizing the pressure. Air forks bring considerable upsides compared to spring forks. The weight saving is massive and brings additional comfort that spring forks simply can't provide. However, they are not a silver bullet. As with every closed cartridge, if the cartridge from the damping leg loses its oil pressure, you'll lose all damping performance immediately. Besides that, the air pressure inside a pneumatic cartridge will more easily be affected by temperature variations, so you should check it before every ride. And despite being a simple technology, the pneumatic cartridge requires more frequent maintenance compared to hydraulic cartridges. Even with a special grease, nothing beats having everything dipped in oil to reduce wear. I hope you now fully understand how air forks work. It's not a jigsaw after all, because knowledge is power. If you have any questions, leave them on the comments below. And if you want to finally learn how to take full advantage of your suspensions, take a look at our online suspension courses on our website. Thank you for watching and don't forget to subscribe.