Decient rigid forked hardtail advice

66jj99

I Bought a diamondback "resonse sport" a couple of weeks ago.

It came with a Suntour XCM-LO fork which I've just swapped out, as it was poo - Clicky/bobby/wobbly- etc.

Does anybody have any recommendations for a £500ish hardtail (27 gears & Deore+ spec) that has a rigid fork ?

It's for my wife. I'd rather her go with rigids, then upgrade to a Marzocchi MX comp ETA or similer.

-This plan would avoid her having to arse about with any of the substandard forks spec'ed on hartails at this price javascript:emoticon(':idea:')
Idea


Any manufacturers catering for like minded consumers at the moment ?

- surely I'm not the only one, am I .. ? !

Andy

Anyone buying a bike for £500 need only look as far as the Carrera Fury.

66jj99

Hey good call Andrew - I had a go on a Rockhopper at the weekend which was running a Tora 318.

Perhaps a bit heavy for a birds bike- but worth considering none the less.

Bloody Hellfords though !

"The UK's biggest car parts range" it say's in huge letters. - Have you ever heard so much nonsense ?! Gotta love the cheek of 'em.



Bit of a quandry really - I managed to get a new MX Comp ETA for £146 this week - they're a clear 1lb lighter than the old Cro-mo steel Tora's.


Hmm. what to do..

supersonic

Forks at this price are far better than they used to be, even some of the Suntours (the XCR DA series for example). Nothing wrong at all with Dart 2 and 3, feature a hydraulic damping circuit, and as said above, the Fury gets a great fork in the form of the Tora 318. 5 years ago this fork would have been 400 quid on its own! Decathlons 500 quid rockrider also sports a Tora, and the budget Manitous arent too bad (slate). Stay away from Marzocchi MZ and and RST and you are generally OK.

66jj99

No no no.

mistake - not Suntour XCM on the bike I just bought -rather an XCR-LO 120mm which are absolutly poop - tried 4 others on different bikes -just to confirm it's not a quality control issue.

Look. Jjust because something is cheap, shouldn't mean that we accept it & be thankful. Great things are acheivable now - especially in Tawain.


I'm actually offended that these touted as the best we can get for our consumer pound.. What's the point ? Why bother letting an otherwise good machine down with poorly executed crud like that.. ?

At the manufacturing stage probably another £4.00 (or so) would would enable better tollerances in the machining & or seals etc. -

We know that the quiality will improve over the next season or three anyway, don't we.

Sweet Harry Chr*st, bang a rigi on boy's - & let us sort ourselves out ! - these are fit for the scrapper & nowt else

Sorry - ranting now. Obviously realising they are sourcing them for about £25 per unit. - everybody wants to be seen with "sus-forks", so the policy sells lots more bikes.

People of the forum: Resist !

supersonic

There are more than one SR XCR fork, with different options, and a lot of the work perfectly well with decent damping and seals. The XCM is crap, and the XCR with mechanical lockout is too. I also feel that beginners would be better served with a fork BUT onkly if its damped. I do not like seeing undamped forks at all, and would agree that in some (but not all) a rigid would be better.

ROCHA

I do agree that, on a performance point of vue, it's stupid to have a cheap sus fork on a xc bike. Rigids will be lighter, thus faster. Only light and expensive sus forks will be better than a rigid for xc, if you're thinking about performance alone.

However I believe that, if you're not racing, just riding for fun, you won't bother having an extra pound or two if that keeps your wrists from aching. Of course most cheap sus forks are crap but they'll still make the bike more comfy and that's why people want them.

Some budget forks have crazy feature like lockout! That's just stupid! Manufacturers should make the forks more simple, light, tough and reliable instead of putting gadgets and flashy colours an decals on them.

But part of this is also the buyers' fault. Some people are stupid enough to buy a budget fork with lockout (wich they'll never use) and other stuff like shiny stickers wich will do nothing to increase performance and will make the fork more expensive.

A typical example of these kind of forks is the Marzocchi MZ. It has nothing but springs on the inside and has little sensitivity yet it costs nearly £100! There's also a version of it with remote lockout. :x
The fork you refered to, the suntour xcr-lo is a similar case. The lockout, even when not completely locked, afects the compression and, together with some stiction on the sliders, makes the fork less plush. It just makes the fork worse, but for some reason this is the most popular version. There is a cheaper version of xcr, the DA with damping adjust in wich the damping actually works (at least it seems so), and without the stupid lock, but I've never seen one on any new bike. I think it's not as popular because the buyers are more concerned with the gadget features rather than the features that matter.

One thing that is often neglected on low buget forks is negative travel/ negative springs. On oil damped forks there's no big problem on not having decent negative springs 'cause the rebound is slow. But when there's no oil damping and no negative springs the fork rebounds real fast and when it reaches the top of it's travel it goes "clonk!" and you actually feel that on your arms and back. You'd be better of using rigids in this case, cause it really hurts your back. You can see if a fork as negative travel or not by putting your foot on the front wheel and pulling the bars up. If the fork extends it has negative travel and will not go "clonk!" when it fully rebounds.

But people don't see this kind of things, they only see the stickers and the show off feature. That's why there are so many crappy budget forks, because people actually buy them. The manufacturers probably wouldn't mind spending the money on better seals and real damping but people want stickers and gadgets instead.

IT'S JUST STUPID! :evil:

sicknewt

Ok chaps, which of these is best/worst then?

1. RockShox Tora 302 80mm travel TurnKey lockout
2. SR Suntour X-100 suspension fork 100mm travel, 32mm legs, preload adjustable, mag lowers and lock out
3. RockShox Dart 2.5 /100mm / lockout / preload

66jj99

All sets of Suntour's I've ever seen have oil/grease leaking out of between the seals & stanchions. Including couple of brand new "never been ridden" pairs.


If you check out some review sites - the sort where lots of users can log their opinions (like Bikemagic) you can build up a picture of the sorts of re-occuring issues that any particular make/model has.

I'd say that's a lot safer than going off one or two tests or reviews of the sort that can be published in glossy bike mags. Often it's just one persons experience after an afternoon test ride, which forms the basis of the test.


Even better - get to some bike shops & tell them you want to test these three for yourself.

Nothing like giving stuff a good once over in the flesh !

ROCHA

Most cheap suntours do need grease and its seals are suposed to keep dirt out, not oil in. Even those that have hidraulic damping have a sealed cartridge, so the oil doesn't need the stanchion seals to keep it inside. This can be seen on their website. I don't know how that particular model works, so I can't say anything about it.

The tora is a good fork that can work as nicelly as much more expensive ones. You can buy better and more expensive ones but I doubt someone will tell you that toras don't work properly or have reliabilty issues. There are people complaining about the springs being too soft for most riders. But it's still a good fork that will take some punishment and will serve you well for a long time. Despite not beeing too expensive, I don't think of it as a budget fork, it's on a different level.

The dart isn't as good as the tora but it's still a good fork for the money. The tora looks, and indeed is, more reliable, plush and tough than the dart.

The tora is the best fork, IMO.

supersonic

The very budget XCRs are coil/elastomer (as on the Carrera Vulcan), and production varies, so some perform different to others. So are the XCTs. These do use a lot of grease in them. Having sold dozens of bikes with said forks, you are right, you do build up a picture! And the damped ones are perfectly reasonable IMHO, esp the XCR DA, and the ones with the hydraulic speed lock.

The Tora is the best fork, no doubt, and its a close call between the X100 and dart, as the dart also has varying production variations. They piss all over the MZ series which is truly dire except the super comp.

66jj99

Good stuff Gents. Sounds like you really knows yer onions.


So I've found a bike that fits the bill & the budget its the :Giant Escape M Zero

I'm not calling the hunt off quite yet though.

3148wood

My younger brother has just bought a 24/7 slacker for about £500 and it came with Marzocchi Dirt Jam Pro forks as a first proper jump bike, and as far as I am concerned they aren't the best forks in the world, but they are also not the worst, the external parts of the forks are the same as 2004 Dirt Jumper 3 forks, so they are stong enough, they have some adjustments to how hard they are and the damping is not too bad either.

I know what you mean though, there are some bikes around that come with proper flexy forks with really bad damping, the ones on my broters bike are better because there is more of the £500 budget spent on them because it is single speed.

I also hate cheap cable disc brakes that are no better than vee brakes.

supersonic

I think sometimes you have to look at things from a different angle ie what best for may not be the best for somebody else and vice versa. Personally I run V brakes, but a good set of cable discs on a budget bike work a lot better in the wet, and offer an easy upgrade path to hydraulics.