Upgrade or refirb

jsync

Hi,

I have a rockhopper with a recon silver tk 100mm shock that needs refirbing. I am very tempted to do it myself and a full overhaul will cost approx £40. However, I have recently had a go on a mates reign with a fox talas and been impressed with the difference so have also been looking at upgrades. I see that there are a couple of offers about for the following:

recon gold tk £180
reba rl £250

So the million dollar question is will there be much of improvement with a recon gold or is the reba streets ahead?

In addition I am tempted to increase the travel to 120mm, which I believe is easy on the reba with the supplied spacer. I have been looking at other bikes with this fork and the one that stands out is the boardman ht pro, which has near identical measurements to the rockhopper apart from a 69 degree head as opposed to 70 on the rockhopper. Am I correct in thinking that an extra 20mm will result in approx a 69 degree angle?

Thanks,

1mancity2

The extra 20mm will slacken the angle a bit but unsure how much, check with specialized that 120mm fork won't invalidate your warranty.

The reba is miles ahead of the recon.

felix.london

Went through the same conundrum last season with my '06 'hopper but I had a 105mm Marzocchi MX on it. Went for the Reba RL 120mm - it's a lot lighter than Recon

(about 1/4kg if I remember correctly? - you better double check that on SRAM's site because my memory is cr@p!)

If you've got the money - go for the better fork (imo). 120mm works really well on the Rockhopper - well on the 2006 model anyway