Fitting Sus forks to a '95 Palisades Trail...

2far

Hi there!
I have a Marin Palisades Trail circa 1995 which I raced XC and kept very well maintained, until '99/'00 when I stopped using it and hung it up in the folks garage whilst I went off on my travels. Ten years on I've pulled it out of retirement. Still works fine and have serviced it but my body is a little more sensitive to those bumps now I've hit my thirties. Time to get some suspension forks.
My query is: Is it a simple case of, off with the old forks on with the new forks? Is the frame even compatible with todays forks?
I've been looking at the Rockshox ToraTK / Recon Gold RL forks. Would either of these be fine?

Any advice would be much appreciated... Cheers!

ps: I'm steering clear of disc-brakes. Unnecessary expense for my level of riding.

warpcow

You need to know the diameter of the headtube on the frame. I think Marin used some funny/old-fashioned sizes for a while. Ideally the fork probably shouldn't have much more than 80mm of travel. Rockshox' air-sprung forks are easy to reduce from 100mm, but it's probably not absolutely necessary.

You'll probably need a new threadless headset, or have the steerer of the new fork cut and threaded. It could be a pain to find a shop who can do that nowadays, but by no means impossible.

If you can't find the headtube diameter, or no one here can help, try on retrobike.co.uk. There are a few very nice looking old Marins on there, and their owners are always very knowledgable. Once you've got the headtube diameter, Ribble had some good deals on Toras with V-brake/canti studs.

VWsurfbum

I had the same bike and did the same!
I had to get a set of threaded 1" SR Suntour 80mm forks (the max i would recomend BTW) unfortunatly having a 1" steerer really limits what you can buy.

Great bike BTW and great level of kit, oldskool LX and ARAYA wheels nice

flymoripper

Headset should be 1 1/8" as it was on my '90 Pine Mountain to which I fitted some Pace RC35's. I think by '95 they were building the frames to be compatible with sus forks but I don't think Marin ever went with 1.25" Evo headsets.....

Dave_P1

I expect your headset will be 1 1/8" and any of todays forks will be fine. Bear in mind that not many forks have mounts for a rim brake so you might need to buy a front disc brake too.

cooldad

Have a look on www.retrobike.co.uk for some contemporary forks to match the geometry.