What fork should I buy? :) 100mm'ish trail fork for a sub 5

chrisp

The time has come to replace the ageing and frankly not-great Manitou Black on my Sub 5. I had thought about going for something a little longer travel, but I'm told it'll have an adverse effect on the geometry and I should look to stick with a 100mm or so travel fork.

Budget is about £330 and I'm looking for a nice rigid-steering fork for 'aggresive XC' trail riding.

Any ideas? Rockshox Reba maybe?

Cheers,

Chris.

papasmurf.

Rebas always good reviews and you can pick them up from Merlin fairly cheap.

Magura Durin or Laurin might be worth a look but probably a touch out of budget

ride_whenever

Reba SL is excellent, but for £340 you could buy one from tftuned, pre-pushed and set to your weight, which'll nicely take that issue off your hands.

ride_whenever

although it might work out cheaper to buy a reba SL from merlin and have it pushed seperately...

chrisp

ride_whenever wrote:

Reba SL is excellent, but for £340 you could buy one from tftuned, pre-pushed and set to your weight, which'll nicely take that issue off your hands.

Cool. What's involved in setting them up? Is it worth paying the premium to get a professional to do it?

ride_whenever

nothing much involved, set +air to get sag, -ve air for plushness, then rebound/compression to taste! You'll need a shock pump to do so

If you buy from tf, they'll put in a custom compression/rebound circuit which is supposedly much better.

smitty

reba all the way very good performing fork

chrisp

Cheers. Sounds good.

The question is which variant of Reba; and to pop-lock or not?

ride_whenever

depends if you want remote lockout or not, bearing in mind it is expensive to switch either way once purchased.

stumpyjon

I got a pop lock with my REBA Teams, not sure it's worth the extra. Been riding on road with them recently and the only time I've locked them out is on out of the saddle up hill sections, rest of the time I have them unlocked, road conditions around me are terrible :evil:

chrisp

I've heard that the poplock systems have a tendancy to leak, anyone experienced this?

I quite like the of a lock-out, but not if it's going to compromise the fork.

Trying to get me head around the range? Am I right in thinking there's no difference in the springs or damping, it's just that one has a hollow crown to save weight?

supersonic

If you get a poplock, get the adjust version or you won't be able to set the compression damping.

chrisp

Any thoughts on the Magura Menja? That name seems to be cropping up a fair bit. As far as I can tell the basic jist is they're a bit heavier than the Rebas, but stiffer and equally plush?