It doesn't suck

 There are a couple other post ideas I've been musing for over a week, but this one leapfrogged ahead of them, and not just because in some ways it is even further overdue. Remember, good things come to those who wait, but sometimes this blog's posts come as well, so maybe that's net even.

I've been excedingly happy to see mountain bike geometry revert back to what it was originally in the mid eighties: slack and long. It started with downhill bikes, and then eventually someone figured out that there wasn't any particular reason a bike had to be a twitchy mess just because it was light enough to climb back up the hill. A little bit longer, and the industry even realized that hardtails, without the benefit of rear suspension's stability, could benefit even more from geometry that was inherently stable. Yay!

The problem for me was, by the time that was realized, even the hardtails were coming with 120mm travel forks, and those with the truly long and slack geometry were marketed as downhill hardtails with even longer travel forks. It's hard to find a long enough rigid fork to replace that, even when accounting for some suspension sag.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right? Last year, I started contemplating relenting on my love of rigid forks. They don't perform better, but in addition to never leaking, I think they offer a rider the full challenge and experience of mountain biking, completely unmuted. On a rigid bike, if I do something wrong, there is nothing to hide it, but when I do it ride, I experience every Newton of g force, complete, pure, untarnished. That appeals to me.

And yet, I started looking at suspension forks. Then within a week, I went to help people fix their rides at Bike Lab, and there, in the pile of fresh donations, was a fairly new, fairly long travel suspension fork. I pulled it out. Yup, quite long travel, as in 160mm. To put that in my perspective, that's more fork travel than I've ever had. Even the bike I raced to 10th place in the New England Downhill Championship in 2000 was at most 150mm, and it wasn't a particular well executed 150mm either. The fork had various adjustment knobs, but they may have been more for placebo because they had zero effect on the fork's function.

With the 160mm of travel in my hand at Bike Lab, I said to Ruthie, "This is a much nicer fork than we usually receive as a donation." Her response: "Do you want it?" "Um, yes, I kinda do." That day, last year, I rode home from Northampton with a big fork sprouting out of one of my panniers and the task of finding the long, slack bike to put it on. A couple months later, I found a closeout special on a couple year old Kona Honzo on the Bike Man website, and I, for my first time ever, bought a new mountain bike frame (complete bike still hasn't happened) and had the satisfaction of giving back a sale price amount of money to two companies that had supported my racing.

That Kona is still in the box, but I do have the even older Kona that I raced twice in 2022 before the front bumper of a car sent me on a different course. It would take less than an hour to swap in the long, squishy fork, but for some reason I hadn't, at least not until this past Sunday morning. It fits, is a good complimentary rise to the 27.5" rear wheel that lowered the bike, and the brake mounts are even designed to use the larger 180mm front rotor I'd been wanting to try. Sold!

Small rear wheel 

plus big front fork 

equals one degree slacker, 

even once sagged!

Now, for someone who spent a lot of time and effort for years in order to ride rigid bikes, I am fastidiously particular about suspension. Ok, I'll say it, I'm a suspension weenie. It has to be perfect, and I'll keep tweaking it until it is, FOR ME! I have particular tastes in suspension tuning that could be described as follows (or skipped past if you're a semi normal person despite reading this blog and don't care): initially really soft with a lot of sag, but then progressively much stiffer through the travel. I like high rate springs with very little preload. And damping, I use A LOT of it. When people would push on my suspension, when I had it, most would ask, "Doesn't it pack up [not return to neutral before hitting the next bump]"? I think I ride pretty light on a bike, which is why I could survive without suspension, and that also meant the travel didn't have to push against my weight to return in time for the next bump. I just hate when the travel bounces back too fast, so lots of damping.

These are the manufacturer's recommendations for that fork's serial number supporting my weight. What am I using? To achieve roughly 40mm of sag, 25% of the fork travel, I'm using 40psi. And the rebound? Yup, that's as slow as it can go, minus zero clicks. And to keep the soft fork from diving under braking, I'm running the lockout, which is really a compression damper, almost, but not quite, completely on. So yes, despite only slightly more than one third of the recommended pressure help push my weight back up, I still wanted max resistance to that return speed.

How does it work? See this post's title. Keep in mind, from me, regarding suspension, that is actually pretty high praise. This fork was probably donated to Bike Lab when someone upgraded to something fancier and lighter (despite all that travel and cheaper, heavier steel stanchions, I don't consider this fork excessively heavy), but I'm impressed that I can tune a relative entry level fork to my liking with the adjustment available from the factory. Sure, I may add some oil to the air chamber to reduce the volume and make the fork a little more progressively stiffer (ie, the same effect as adding "tokens" but a lot cheaper and readily available!), but still, wow, I'm impressed by the amount technology trickle down. A "cheap" fork these days is actually pretty good!

How does it ride? Let me first step back to describing the last full suspension bike I owned. It was a 2006 Iron Horse with 120mm of travel designed by Dave Weagle. David designs some terrific bikes that still pedal well despite lots of travel. I once sprinted around the New England Mountain Bike festival on one of his Sunday downhill designs, and it pedalled just fine. How did the 120mm travel version work? So well that I eventually sold it as a form of self preservation. It worked so well that it wasn't truly interesting and engaging to ride until I hit speeds at which I should've been wearing full downhill gear.

160mm travel is a third more than the fork on that bike had, but with the solid, stiff rear end, the hardtail seems a well advised speed limiter. When I first mentioned the idea of a 160mm travel fork on a hardtail to my friend and frame builder, Matt Gaspar, who is no slouch about riding bikes fast downhill, he voiced concern that it might be too big an imbalance. I wasn't without concern myself, but I'm happy to report, with it tuned my way, it definitely doesn't suck. I might even like it. I've ridden it two days in a row, and while I have other plans for tomorrow, who knows. Maybe I can fit in an evening mountain bike ride. Old dog, new squish!