alps bike 180mm or 200mm

ellsbells1973

looking at getting a canyon torque frx next year for my roadtrip to the big hills of france, however canyon do the torque frx with a fox 36 180mm with shimano zee, and a boxxer 203mm with sram 9, for the same price of £1700, i know both are capable bikes but would the 203mm boxxer fork seem a bit over biked, for when i get back to the uk, i will do downhill on the bike but have no intentions of competing so is 180mm the better option, any advice please

felix.london

If you only want the bike for full on DH then go for the one with the Boxxer but if you want to be able to peddle anywhere at all go for the freeride version

The gearing on the DH bike will be useless for anything remotely resembling up. The 180mm (freeride version) will have a standard 11-36t cassette so will make peddling up slightly easier. As well as being lighter and have a slightly steeper head angle

...I'd think

The Rookie

The Shimano 4 pot brakes are so much better than X9 anyway that I'd expect similar performance despite the larger disc on the X9.

chez_m356

The Beginner wrote:

The Shimano 4 pot brakes are so much better than X9 anyway that I'd expect similar performance despite the larger disc on the X9.

where did you get that from? the ops on about forks and gearing, brakes are avid on both, elixir 5's and a 7/XO combo

felix.london wrote:

The gearing on the DH bike will be useless for anything remotely resembling up. The 180mm (freeride version) will have a standard 11-36t cassette so will make peddling up slightly easier.

what he said, a 17kg bike is quite lump