Rigid Forks - "Suspension Corrected"?

Agzee
Agzee Posts: 30
edited July 2007 in MTB workshop & tech
After a period of some 40-years I have returned to cycling and at present I am using a mountain bike, a hardtail (believe that is the correct jargon!) but am not happy with the front suspension that is fitted at present.

The original suspension fork had 80mm of travel but I was not particularly impressed with them and changed the fork to one with 100mm of travel (after checking with the manufacturers of the bike to see what forks could be fitted).

Now I have decided as the bike is mostly used on roads and the odd forest trail I would like to fit a rigid front fork.

The fork that I am interested in is made by Salsa and in the specification it mentions that the fork is "Suspension Corrected", could someone possibly tell me what this term means?

Thanks

Agzee
Agzee

Comments

  • Big Red S
    Big Red S Posts: 26,890
    It means that the fork is longer than perhaps neccesary, so it doesn't feel too weird on a frame designed for suspension forks.
    If you fit a fork that is markedly shorter than the one on the bike at the minute, the head angle will steepen, and the handling will be more twitchy. Also your weight will be a bit further forwards.

    Before the mass popularity of longer (>100mm) forks, most rigid forks were fairly short - just long enough to get over the wheel. Since then, most rigid forks are now about the length of a 100mm suspension fork.
    http://avi.co/doc/Forums.html
  • Agzee
    Agzee Posts: 30
    Big Red S wrote:
    If you fit a fork that is markedly shorter than the one on the bike at the minute, the head angle will steepen, and the handling will be more twitchy. Also your weight will be a bit further forwards.

    Thanks for the explanation, the original suspension fork had 80mm travel and Scott tech support said that I could replace it with a fork having between 80mm to 120mm of travel.

    The present fork utilises 100mm of travel but I want to change the bike into a sort of 'tourer' so if I fit the Salsa CroMoto rigid fork it will give me options of fitting decent mudguards and front pannier rack.

    Fitting the Salsa fork should return the bike to more or less the original frame/fork geometry and handling.

    Cheers - Agzee
    Agzee

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