Fork diving in its own travel when braking

chrisrahi9

Hi!

I have a bicycle fitted with a Marzocchi 350 R coil fork. When I ride the bicycle and try to brake the fork dive through 50% of its travel. Is it something normal or it is not supposed to be like that? I weigh 80 kg and the sag is about 25% when I stand on the bicycle, which I think is perfect. Although the fork is a coil fork it has an air preload adjust, would it then be helpful to reduce the dive if I pump in more air?
Thanks!

supersonic

Most forks will dive to an extent as you brake, as your centre of mass is transferred forward. A harder spring rate would decrease how much it dives, but you may not get full travel. I'm not sure how your air preload works on this Marzochhi as they have changed it a few times over the years, but it is worth experimenting with.

Others ways are to increase low speed compression damping (but this is fixed on your fork) and to add 5-10mm to the oil height in the damper to increase progression of the fork, but again, will make it harder to reach full travel.

rockmonkeysc

You need to add some air but it is a fork which dives quite badly. I had the 350CR and ended up replacing most of the internals to get it working properly. I had 350ncr dampers and seals but with the stanchion oil seals replaced with Rockshox Boxxer foam seals.

chrisrahi9

RockmonkeySC wrote:

You need to add some air but it is a fork which dives quite badly. I had the 350CR and ended up replacing most of the internals to get it working properly. I had 350ncr dampers and seals but with the stanchion oil seals replaced with Rockshox Boxxer foam seals.

Yeah, after reading some reviews i noticed that many says that it dives badly. The bicycle is new so I haven't tried it yet on big drops but does this diving affect the fork ability to take up large hits?

rockmonkeysc

No, it's fine on big drops. Awful on high frequency bumps though.