I rode this fork in a 1 1/8” straight steertube variety so that I could easily run an AngleSet in my Giant Reign X, and felt that the stiffness of the fork was fine. I would say it was comparable to the tapered Lyrik that it replaced, but both of these forks felt slightly less stiff than the X-Fusion Vengeance with a solid bolt-on 20mm axle.
The 20mm QR axle that the Marzocchi employs, however, has been quite a bit of a pain. It is temperamental, to say the least. I have ridden a lot of bikes, and since I worked in shops for a decade, I have set up literally thousands and thousands of front axles. I know how tight the front skewer needs to be. If you close the axle with a “normal” amount of tension, the axle does not apply enough tension to the hub, which then makes the hub clunk when you tag a rock straight on.
I continued to play with the axle tension and managed to get the axle tight enough so that the hub was properly closed, but this required the axle being closed so tightly that I had to use a wrench to pry it open. I contacted Marzocchi, and they were more than happy to evaluate under warranty, but claimed not to have heard of this issue before. (For what it’s worth, I have sent two other Marzocchi forks in on warranty for this same issue in the past.)
At this point in the season, however, I cannot be without a fork for two or more weeks to get it evaluated. I will update this one point of contention with the fork as soon as I can get it resolved, but until then I would encourage readers with 55s to post in this thread if they have or have not had issue with their axles as well, to get a better read on whether this is a recurring issue.
Conclusion:
The Marzocchi 55 Micro Ti is a very nice fork. It’s smooth, reasonably light (the Fox Float and RockShox Lyrik are both ~0.3 pounds lighter; the X-Fusion Vengeance is the same weight), and has a nice feel. That said, I do feel that the fork is slightly outclassed in terms of sensitivity and trail feel by both the Lyrik Solo-Air and the X-Fusion Vengeance. The 20mm axle also remains an open issue in my mind. I certainly am happy with the performance of the fork, but I do think that at equivalent prices one can get several slightly better performing forks with fewer issues.
My 2012 Micro Ti has the exact same issue with the axel. I have to carry a T hex wrench to open it when riding incase of a flat. I like the fork but it’s time for a dedicated 27.5 fork the Sweep is high on the list
I used to have two Marzocchi forks. Bothe were hopeless. I cannot even imagine any Marzocchi can be at least average fork.