Fitting new forks

Adamharkin

Hi all, I own a carerra hellcat limited edition 29er, looking to change out the forks but not sure what to get, the current ones are suntour xcm, very basic, currently have 100mm travel, what advice can you give me? Thanks in advance.

cooldad

I think your biggest problem will be finding decent 29er forks with a 1 and 1/8th straight steerer.

Saying that pretty decent for £170

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/rockshox-recon- ... 60715291uk

The Rookie

The Hellcat uses a zero stack 44mm headset, like most Merida frames using that headset I would imagine it has a 44mm headtube so can take tapered steerer with a new lower headset.

cooldad

Forks will end up costing more than the bike.

larkim

cooldad wrote:

I think your biggest problem will be finding decent 29er forks with a 1 and 1/8th straight steerer.

Saying that pretty decent for £170

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/rockshox-recon- ... 60715291uk

Bought and fitted just that model to my cheap 29er yesterday. Pleasantly surprised that the retail box also included a shock pump, spare seal kit and OneLoc handlebar remote lockout too which I wasnt expecting.

Rode it today on my first trip to Cannock, very impressed in comparison to the Suntour fork which came off.

Adamharkin

Thanks for all the info guys, I know that the bike isn't the best. I've rode bikes for years, but only recently starting to get into mountain biking (I'm a former bmxer) so I know abit about bikes but as for parts on mountain bikes it's all a blur in the way of what forks I'm going for ect. Ideally I'd ride some trails, bit of cross country maybe few downhill spots (cannock chase is my nearest) if I had the money I'd go and grab myself a nice downhill but at the moment I'm having to sacrifice. I like the way the bike rides and so forth, just not happy with the forks as they're just preloaded and bottom out on anything I hit. Prefer air rather than coil. If I was to fit a different headset I could potentially run tapered? Or do you think I should get myself a penny jar and start saving?

larkim

As I understand it, you can't fit tapered to a straight headtube, but you can fit straight to a tapered headtube (in the vast majority of circumstances).

I went down a small number of the downhill tracks at Stile Cop yesterday on my new Recon, but if I say I was ranked closed to 2300 out of 2500 descents on the Red Run you'll get an idea of how much trouble I'm putting the Recon fork through. i.e. not much at all!

It worked beautifully on FTD and Monkey though (my first time there, so I wasn't fast, even by my poor standards!)

cobba

larkim wrote:

As I understand it, you can't fit tapered to a straight headtube

You can fit a tapered fork to a straight headtube if the headtube has a internal diameter of 44mm, to do this you would need to change the bottom assembly of the headset to one that takes a 1.5" steering tube.

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/cane-creek-40-series-ec44-40-bottom-assembly/rp-prod115641
https://www.bike24.com/p227694.html

larkim

But do most 1 1/8 straight bike frames have a 44mm internal diameter head tube? I thought that was reasonably uncommon (happy to be wrong though!)

cooldad

Pretty much right.
If it was designed for a standard external 1 1/8th cup it won't work, so the majority of bikes sold before 201?

If it is 1 1/8th with zero stack it might with the right bottom cup.

The Rookie

larkim wrote:

But do most 1 1/8 straight bike frames have a 44mm internal diameter head tube? I thought that was reasonably uncommon (happy to be wrong though!)

Uncommon enough that every Carrera MTB has had it since 2005?

44mm head tubes are not at all uncommon.

larkim

I stand correct (happily!) - shows what I know (relatively little!)

cooldad

Useful to have a Carrera geek sometimes. Not often but sometimes.