What happened to front suspension on road bikes?

SteveOC

I was browsing the Cannondale bike archives (2000) and came across their Silk Road bikes fitted with the HeadShok front suspension system http://gb.cannondale.com/bikes/archive/

It seems like a good idea so why don't we see bikes like this any more? Anyone with experience of these bikes?

Anonymous

its basically a hybrid really isnt it.

Plus suspension makes the bike very inefficient.

aracer

SteveOC wrote:

It seems like a good idea so why don't we see bikes like this any more?

Does it? The reason you don't see them is because it's not (for a pure road bike).

mrushton

It was a good idea. They used their headshock system for the cobbled classics and it had a neat button in the centre of the h-set to lockout the suspension but.....there was a weight penalty and really it never caught on. Carbon forks came along and better bike designs esp. in carbon. Look how the Cervelo RS has become one of the bikes by rethinking the rear seat stays to provide a 'spring' effect. Trek did something a couple of years back with elastomer in the seat tube which seems to show that for the riders the problem wasn't in the front end it's more rider comfort - hence Boonen having to use an alloy bike until Specialized came up with a carbon one for him.

SteveOC

Thanks for the replies.

I stopped riding my road bike on the commute to work due to rough roads and swapped it for a fat tyred mountain bike and thought it an improvement. Then I had to go back to the road bike out of necessity (mountain bike headset neglected to death) and was so impressed by the reduced effort and speed improvement on the road bike that the mountain bike never felt the same again.

Were Cannondale the only manufacturer who tried road suspension on regular looking bikes? (I've seen Moulton's ).

Down the Road

There's no performance benefit in a fork. Lower your tyre pressure fit wider tyres (25 or 28mm) and you'll get all the comfort you'll need.

Look at the STANDARD (not the specials) ridden in roubaix and Flanders and you'll see how it's done.

Carbon fork technology also made suspension redundant

Steve2020

Apparently its on the way back:

http://www.velonews.com/article/75037/t ... -big-thing

Monty Dog

I beg to disagree - the reason suspension didn't catch on at P-Rx was that it was heavy and it just didn't react fast enough on the pave - rather than getting rapid rebound, you just get a pogo effect and potential loss of control. Mapei's winning streak on stock C40s put paid to the concept of suspension bikes. Perhaps todays modern air shocks would be better? If you want a good absorbent fork, fit a titanium one - it's a fraction of the weight of a suspension one and needs zilch maintenance.

synchronicity

I had a Mrazek bike that was equipped with a Rock Shox Ruby. It definitely works, but here in Tenerife you're either going down (great!) or climbing (not so great). I didn't like the slower steering as a result of mounting the fork on a normal road bike... also the lockout didn't work at all.

They can be picked up from ebay super cheaply.

Have a look at these reviews
http://www.mtbr.com/reviews/Front_Shock ... 1606.shtml

I'd really like to see fork manufacturers have another stab at it with an air shock + full lockout + specific head tube angle geometry to suit. I think it'd catch on.

LangerDan

One of the big problems with the Silk Road was the cost and time required for maintenance. In order to avoid the slackness in handling that can come from having the suspension elements in each side of the fork, they moved the whole lot into the head tube. To keep the whole lot running smoothly and accurately they put 4 strips of linear roller bearings into the headtube and the fork moves up and down against these. In reality these bearing strips wore out quite quickly and when last I checked (2+ years ago), they were difficult to source and were a fairly daft price - £80+ per set IIRC.

Kléber

Road bikes are sold on performance, imagery of people winning races. They are not sold as cures for back pain and rolling armchairs, as comfy things to sit on.

Even full suspension MTB bikes vaunt the damping not as a comfort measure but as something that will allow you to ride faster over rocky terrain.

robbie the roadie

Don't forget the rock shox 'ruby' (roubaix) fork that very quickly disapeared off the radar.

I guess the biggest problem was getting a fork that was responsive enough to work on the pave without it bottoming out all the time. Very hard to achieve considering the very small amount of travel these systems had.