Changing forks from cheap rubbish to half decent

Shooting mike

Hi there,

New to the forum but been mtbing for years on and off...

I have a pretty basic cheap bike - a barracuda. For the money, I quite like it. It is VERY light, the shimano gears fly in and out quickly and smoothly, the v brakes are really keen and for the amount I do, it's fine for me at the moment. The only problem is, it has cheap crappy zoom forks. So I was thinking of investing in some cheap rock shox or sun tour's or something like that. Nothing too dear as it's just not worth it on such a cheap bike.

Are they easy to swap or would it be a bottomless pit of having to swap the handlebar stem, bars etc.... At the minute, it's a really basic steel stem but does the job.

Thanks.....

supersonic

Need to know more about your bike ie the type of headset - is it threaded, or threadless?

unixnerd

The Suntour XCR is a very decent fork for the money, I paid 40 quid for mine. Their reasonably light too. The only downside is the seals, in bad conditions (Cairngorms in winter) I need to strip and clean them once a month. But for normal use you won't have any issues. You sometimes find them cheap on ebay from folk who've upgraded before they've ridden them on a new bike.

If you do ever need to strip and clean them it's an easy job. There's a plastic inner section, be sure to remove those from the fork legs too.

rockmonkeysc

Rigid forks would be a big improvement over the zoom forks

Shooting mike

How will I know if the headset is threaded or not???? It's just a very basic head setup - a really basic stem and some bars that clamp in with 1 nut.

If I went for something like the sun tour xcr, would they be easy to fit or would a new stem be needed ( which wouldn't be a bad thing !)

cooldad

Shooting mike wrote:

How will I know if the headset is threaded or not???? It's just a very basic head setup - a really basic stem and some bars that clamp in with 1 nut.

If I went for something like the sun tour xcr, would they be easy to fit or would a new stem be needed ( which wouldn't be a bad thing !)

Do some home work or post a pic. But sounds like a threaded headset, probably 1", and in that case, no. You would need to find some 1" threadless forks, a 1" headset, stem and possibly new bars.

FunBus

....or you could just buy a 1" threaded suspension fork and you wont need to replace anything else - keep the same stem and bar.

Having 1" threaded forks will limit your options on which you can have, but there'll be a fwe to choose from to suit your budget