My like of the Schwindle didn't dwindle!

 I considered using "love" in this post's title, but it seemed a little early for that. After all, today's ride of Batchelor Street Trails was only the first real date. Still, I like it, or at least the adventure of trying it, enough to post about it twice already. The heart is a mysterious thing!

The parts on this bike are generally genuinely one step above broken, and it is only a very short step at that. The mere act of actually riding it might often be enough to cast them over those stairs, although I shall not complain. It was that very nature of this bike that resulted in a bent axle that resulted in its bequiethal to me in nearly new condition. Yes, I could simply salvage the frame, which I do believe has tremendous merit, and excise the cadre of horrendous bits hanging off it, but I'm now enticed by the idea of testing just how adequate it can be with a touch of reengineering instead of the easy route of upgrades.

Let me start with the fork, please! Thank you, I did. I will say, the fork is far smoother in its compression than I would have expected. Well, nearly new means the realities, and muck, of the world haven't yet had a chance to ooze past the meager (generous phrasing) seals and gum up the works. Still, I'd noticed a complete lack of top-out bumpers, and on the trail, it is a loud piece of kit, thunking off every return. 

I suppose it might be possible to incorporate some form of bumper, but on my return from the ride, I opted for a simpler first step: reduce how much the fork actually moves to reduce how much wind-up the thunking return stroke can achieve. Zero compression means zero top out, and readers may have noticed my rigid fork love, and that relationship is decades only, so I'm well comfortable with "love".

Thus, I do plan to one day replace the wheel holder up front with a rigid unit, so why not limit the travel by using the bolts holding the jumble together to pre-compress the elastomer and shorten the overall fork length down to that of a rigid unit? Answer: I can't, because once I pulled it apart, I found nothing so fancy as cheap, cheap eslastomers, with their inherent minor damping characteristic, but instead an entirely undamped metal spring in each leg. Did I mention it topped out really hard?

Different construction than I'd vaguely hoped, but same solution: shorten the bolts and means they'll compress the fork further before they bottom out. I could get shorter bolts, or even shorten and retread the existing ones, but far simpler was increasing the thickness of items they needed to clamp, so they'd swish more spring and fork before bottoming out on the ends of their threads. Two spacers under the bolt heads before reinstalling in the fork crushed everything down 20 millimeters, making the fork nearly rigid at my weight, and as a happy bonus, increasing the overlap of stanchions and sliders so the fork seems to have noticeably less fore-aft wiggle, yay!

Not just preload, pre-compression!

And two last notes on the fork while it lasts on there until I do the right thing and upgrade to a rigid one.

You can tell the quality of a fork by the welds joining the stanchions and sliders. If they don't trust their tolerances enough for a press fit instead of a weld like most  it likely isn't a high quality fork.

Knowing your target market means clearly labelling the front/back of the fork?