how does TALAS work

Mastineo

As I understand it there are 3 travel options, 100mm, 120mm and140mm selectable by a dial on the fork leg. When in the 100mm position do the forks shorten, which would alter the geometry of the bike, or do they stay the same length and the travel reduced internally somehow?
John

Anonymous

They shorten.

paulscutt

somthing to do with a member of the Borrowers in each fork leg doing some kind of magic, i recall.....

Anonymous

Paul's right. Sort of.

What happens is that as you reduce travel in your forks, the borrowers take your travel, and lend it to someone eho's increasing their travel.
There has to be a global harmony of travel adjust, otherwise seals start blowing as the borrowers fight.

stumpyjon

My borrowers were stealing not borrowing, forks kept dropping by themselves. Sent them off to TFTuned and a nice man named Tim had a firm word with the little people and all is now well again .

And to answer your question Mastineo, yes they physically shorten changing the geometry which makes steep uphills and downhills a lot easier. They can also be changed whilst moving (although if they get sticky they don't always return very well), due to the 3 position lever.

I think some TALAS forks actually run at 90mm, 110mm & 130mm (mine are as you said). They come in various flavours, RL (rebound and lockout), RLC (with tunable compression damping as well) and OE versions. Some have externally tunable lock out blow off knobs. COme in 32 & 36 mm stanchions. A cracking fork IMHO although they do need to be serviced by someone who knows what they are doing otherwise the TALAS stuff can get seriously messed up :oops: .

Anonymous

Stumpy, surely you'd shorten the forks for steep climbs, and extend them for steep downhills?

Anyway, to the original poster, I fiddled with my travel adjuster for about a week, until the gimmick wore off, and then never bothered again, I just left it at full travel.
Having said that, both travel adjust forks I had (marzocchi and RockShox) were a bit of a pain to adjust. The travel adjuster had to be wound several times to fully adjust.
Possibly, with the TALAS system, where it's a quicker changeover, things might have been different.

ride_whenever

they change the geometry, but usually that change does what you want it to.


If climbing you drop the front end to 100mm, moves your weight forward, front wheel lifts less, although steering is twitchier.

if descending the opposite happens...

dave_hill

stumpyjon wrote:

My borrowers were stealing not borrowing, forks kept dropping by themselves. Sent them off to TFTuned and a nice man named Tim had a firm word with the little people and all is now well again

You could have saved yourself a lot of money. If you just take the forks off, shake them and shout at the borrowers, eventually somebody will come to help.

stumpyjon

yeehaamcgee wrote:

Stumpy, surely you'd shorten the forks for steep climbs, and extend them for steep downhills?

Yep that's what I meant, sorry it's so second nature now I take it for granted. I do think the TALAS system's best bit is the way you can adjust them while moving. On my Stumpy climbing steeply at 140mm is a nightmare. Bit like the quick release vs adjustable seatpost, not essential but great if you've got one.

John

I'll have to try shouting next time the REBAs play up, I think the TALAS tiny folk have well and truly been spoken to