Friar Broccoli said:..when I was accelerating or pushing up hills a LOT of energy from the
forward thrust was being LOST (as heat I guess) as the front forks were compressed by my downward pedal thrust. ....Thinking about this, it occurred to me that I really don't want my shock absorbers between the frame and front wheel where they are now; but on top between the handle bars and the frame.
With the shocks somewhere in the handle bar assembly, no thrust
energy would be lost to the shocks, and my hands and arms would
still be protected from vibration.
Well, no. Wherever there is flex there are also losses. As long as you have your hands on the handlebars it doesn't matter (much) whether it is the wheel or the bar that is moving in relation to the frame. Only energy advantages I can see would be:
a) riding with very little weight on the bar would make a sus bar assembly less lossy than a sus fork.
b) a sus bar would typically have less travel than a sus fork. With less travel there is less energy lost.
What I can think of is that bike suspension has been around for quite awhile now, and ALL designs has (to some extent) difficulties in separating the motion of rider bobbing up and down through vigorous pedalling from the motion of bike bobbing up and down beneath the rider due to an uneven surface. It might very well be that by now this phenomenon is so well-known that it is assumed to be part of general knowledge rather than a suitable subject for a specific question.Friar Broccoli said:The energy loss on acceleration is so obvious and so extreme
with wheel fork suspension that I would have expected some
mention of it in the FAQ. Any idea why it was not brought up?
I would recommend you to look for an air-sprung fork with lockout, with extra preference given to Marzocchi. Air-sprung will make it really easy to adjust the "spring rate" by varying the pressure, and (some) Marzocchis use a "soft-stop" lockout that doesn't turn the fork completely stiff but rather leaves you with maybe half inch or so of travel.