Suntour XCM advice needed

Harvister

Hello,

I have just purchased a Carrera Vulcan from Halfords. They have the bike advertised as having Suntour XCM V3 with lockout and 120mm fork travel. When i got the bike home it had Suntour SF13-XCM-P-26-120 forks on. Being a newby i didn't realise these didn't have lockouts. I took the bike back to Halfords and they then pulled out a different fork from what they said was "another Carrera Vulcan box" and put these on my bike. The code for these is SF13-XCM-HLO-26-120.

Are these XCM V3 shocks or are they V2? They don't look like the forks on the bike on the Halfords website. And the XCM forks on the SR SUNTOUR website are white, mine are black. So i am totally confused and wondered if anyone could shed any light?

Many Thanks

IDave

I'm no expert but I can tell you what I know.

The SF-13 part means it's the 2013 model
XCM is obviously the main model name
26 (inch) is the wheel size and 120 (mm) is the travel of the fork.
HLO stands for Hydraulic Lock Out

I don't know what P stands for - but I'm almost certain this is an inferior model.

From this I'd say both are XCM V3 - and that you have been correctly upgraded to the version with a lockout.

The colour is irrelevant - they make the fork in many different colours as OEM parts for manufacturers.

Halfords are notorious for fitting random parts to bikes - sometimes you can see 3 'identical' bikes on display and all 3 will have different coloured forks/seats/grips etc.

Harvister

Thanks IDave - glad i got them swapped out. The display models had the P forks. Even the Kraken - supposed to be an upgrade - had the P forks on with no lockout. Wonder how many beginners haven't noticed this as they don't know any better.....

oxocube1

Both the Vulcan and Kraken should both have Lockout and the Kraken should have an XCR, one model higher than the XCM. Sounds like that store has had to do a few warranty changes with parts from their display bikes and ordered in new forks for them that are lower spec; it happens.

And what IDave said is correct. The Fork Models change even if the bike model doesn't. Just happens to be that Suntour are supplying a newer version of the XCM which may be slightly different to the original spec of the bike but it's the nearest equivalent.

Also, the spec sheets and pics on the Halfords website are very often out of date. We get a couple of people every week in our store questioning the spec and noticing that it has changed slightly. They don't seem to update the specs very often if at all!

The Rookie

Sounds like production has swapped to non lockout to me and they haven't updated the speck sheet, as long as it has a damper then frankly I'd prefer without lockout!