SuperSlinky <
[email protected]> wrote in message news:<
[email protected]>...said:
> Save your money and use the fork you have. It isn't a heavy fork at all,
> and I don't understand why less travel is automatically a good thing
> just because you don't use all of it. If you think the geometry will
> drastically change, my experience has been that differences are actually
> much more subtle than I thought they would be. After all, it is the same
> bike. My Fax Vanilla (4.1 lb, coil) can be set up as 80, 100, or 125mm.
> I came set up at 125mm out of the box. My riding style would indicate
> that 80mm would be the correct setting. I set it up without changing the
> travel just to get it rolling, and figured I would knock the travel down
> ASAP. That was a year and a half ago. I just can't find a reason to get
> my hands dirty turning the travel down. I just set the sag to the
> maximum recommended. When I change the oil this winter, I'll set it to
> 80mm just to see what it is like, but it may or may not stay that way
> for long. If your fork can be set to 100mm, I strongly doubt that you
> will see an earth-shattering difference between 100mm and 80mm.
>
> I second the other poster's recommendation for Fox, but none of the Fox
> forks are especially light. You won't save much, if any, weight over the
> fork you have, no matter which one you buy. But Fox forks all have 32mm
> stanchion tubes and the increased stiffness is very, very noticeable
> over my RockShox forks with 30mm tubes, and I'm 5'9" and 165lbs.
I ride a 14" Ti hardtail. I would have chosen an 80-100mm fork, but I
already had the 100-120 Black sitting around. Ya, it looks like
4.2lbs is not too bad compared to all the other coil spring shocks.
All the lighter forks are air. I still like the reliability of coil
spring forks. Riding off road, the fork works well with the rest of
the bike. At 110mm and 4.2 lbs, it is a little more than I would have
prefered while riding on the road (about 50% of the time with a 2nd
set of wheels with narrow slick tires.)
The Black's 100-120mm travel adjustment is not like it would seem.
Spring compression and travel is adjusted all in one. Set at 100mm,
the sring compression is all the way in (stiff). Set at 120mm, the
spring compression is all the way out (soft). Set for me, I have a
110mm travel fork. I never use all the travel, but I could use a
little more top tube clearance. An 80mm fork would drop the top tube
about an inch on the front.
Everything said, I think I will just live with what I have. Maybe
something more to my liking will come available by the time I wear
this one out.