Throwaway components should bother everyone. The cracked wheels or saddles with broken saddle rails, broken frames, or the dropper posts out there that come with nearly ubiquitous internal cartridges that are tossed in the trash and replaced with a new one when they quit working. I recently had a major luggage and bike rack brand tell me that I should pursue a new $400 suitcase because they don’t make a replacement wheel for one that broke, though the brand continues to associate itself with “sustainability.”
This is often the problem with outdoor brands. By nature, they are for-profit companies churning out new products while trying to cozy up to their target market which has wisened to the pitfalls of consumerism.
Most new bikes these days come with adequate dropper posts, but product managers can lower a model’s MSRP by using a house-brand dropper, which often uses the same cartridge or design as competing brands. There’s nothing wrong with these droppers per se. They go up, they go down. But they do have a service life and when they break, it’s often more economical for the consumer to throw it away and upgrade their post to a better one–like a Wolf Tooth Resolve. Something with better performance, adjustable air pressure, a more robust and precise design, and finally… something riders can service at home and keep using for more than just a few years.
About the Wolf Tooth Resolve Dropper Post
- Price: $349
- Buy from Wolf Tooth Components.
Minnesota-based brand Wolf Tooth released the updated Resolve last year with some major key points.
The post has a self-bleeding cartridge, rather than an internal floating piston where air and oil meet at some point. Wolf Tooth claims they are the world’s only model that has this. Other brands like Bike Yoke have a lever where riders can manually purge air from the post when it becomes squishy, resetting it. Older posts like the RockShox Reverb had riders buy a bleed kit for their post, though now they can be purged without a bleed kit, but not as easily as other droppers.
The other points that Wolf Tooth drives home about the post are that it’s completely self-serviceable. The brand calls it their Right to Repair program. Some might find that refreshing amidst the growing number of electronic components on the market. Wolf Tooth sells all 88 pieces of the dropper on their website and have an available library of service videos.
Wolf Tooth has also made the lower tubes of the post swappable, so if you have a 30.9mm post and just bought a new bike with a 31.6mm seat tube, you can bring your post over to the new bike. Unfortunately the post is only available in these two diameters, though more bike brands have been moving to 34.9mm seat tubes in the past few years.
The post is said to work in very cold weather, down to -20°F. A lot of posts start to slow down when it gets chilly out.
The Resolve has a two-bolt saddle clamp with “the lowest stack height of any dropper post on the market.” What’s more, if you want to add some accents, you can buy black, gold, or oil slick colored saddle clamp bolts with your post for an extra $13.
The post comes in three lengths: 125mm, 160mm, and 200mm and the travel can be reduced by 5mm increments. Wolf Tooth will even add the travel spacers at no charge before they ship it.
Wolf Tooth also gave the Resolve a shorter overall length. The lower tube measures 271mm for the 30.9mm, 200mm travel post I tested with an overall length of 523mm. It weighs 544g.
The retail price on the Resolve is $349.
Wolf Tooth ReMote Pro
- Price: $69
- Buy from Wolf Tooth Components.
I also tested the brand new ReMote Pro lever with the Resolve dropper post. The lever is more adjustable than any other remote, says Wolf Tooth. It comes with a bevy of clamp options and can be mounted to various SRAM and Shimano brakes, and also Magura, Hope, and Hayes brakes. There are three mounting points and the starting point for the lever’s rotation can be adjusted by 48°.
The new remote features a cam, or oval shape around the pivot point, giving more leverage at the beginning of the throw, more easily opening the post up, says Wolf Tooth. A large cartridge bearing in the remote makes it even smoother.
The MSRP for the ReMote Pro is $69 and is sold separately from the Resolve post.
Ride impressions
As a 5’8″ rider on size medium bikes, I usually fit between 160mm and 185mm for dropper post travel. Whatever the case, I want the maximum amount of drop so if I’m riding something steep or shooting jumps I don’t have a saddle kicking me in the butt.
I went over the dimensions of my seat tube and Wolf Tooth’s dropper post calculator a few times and it seemed like I could get a 200mm post on my size medium enduro bike. So, that’s what I asked for, knowing that if it was too long, I could add some spacers and take it down a bit.
But, I believe compared to the shorter overall length of the post and the short stack height, not only did the 200mm Resolve fit fine, I had a little bit of room to spare.
Installation is about as simple as it gets for a dropper post. The cable and the actuator at the end of the post calls for a cable barrel. Slide it into place and the cable then pulls through the ReMote, around the cam toward the front. No weird attachments or tricks necessary for this post.
If you want to check or adjust the air pressure for the post, it’s at the top under the saddle clamp. The air valve might work with your suspension pump, but I needed to use an extension with mine, which coincidentally came with a Bike Yoke post.
Wolf Tooth recommends using at least 200psi for the post for the best (and loudest) results. The post sounds off with a satisfying clunk when it reaches full compression and extension. This is intentional, they say, so riders know when it’s up or down when they’re at speed on the trail.
The post comes up smoothly and fast enough, though not as fast as some other posts on the market, which may or may not matter to some. Actuation at the remote isn’t the lightest but the lever is ergonomical and it’s easy to find the perfect position. There’s a nice “against the grain” feel machined into the paddle portion of the lever giving the rider plenty of traction.
I wouldn’t say the down phase of the post is as smooth as some others either, but it’s pretty darn close. The weightless feeling of the Bike Yoke Revive 2.0 and Fox’s latest Transfer SL are very light and very smooth. For me, this isn’t a make-or-break feature.
I wish I’d experienced some of the squish buildup in the Resolve, but in the four months I’ve been using it, there hasn’t been any. Or I just haven’t noticed it before it’s purged the air. It’s been nothing but reliable.
Pros and Cons of the Wolf Tooth Resolve Dropper Post
Pros
- Self-bleeding tech keeps post reliable
- Smooth, satisfying, audible action
- Good ReMote ergonomics
- Easy installation
- Self-serviceable, available replacement parts and guides
Cons
- More expensive than some other posts
- No 34.9mm diameter option
Bottom line
At $420 for the Wolf Tooth Resolve plus the ReMote, there are more affordable posts on the market, though you can save money by using an another remote. But there are a lot of dropper posts on the market that are trash-bound when they’re done. Maybe the company doesn’t make them anymore, or it makes more sense to buy a new post rather than swap the cartridge.
In that case, you have to wonder, who should buy the Wolf Tooth Resolve? I’d argue if you want the best parts on your bike and you’d rather buy service kits than replaceable cartridges which just end up in the trash down the road, then it might be you. Not everyone will want to perform their own service, but there should be plenty of shops where it can be done. So yes, it’s a pricey post, but it’s likely more expensive to keep buying replacement cartridges and posts anyway, and the Resolve is good enough to hang on to for a long while.
- Price: $349 for the Wolf Tooth Resolve dropper post, $69 for the ReMote lever
- Buy from Wolf Tooth.
