Old Fat & Slow Gear Vol. 2 - Forks

No, this isn’t a discussion of Forks Washington, a logging community in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Remember, this is a biking blog. We’re talking suspension forks. My experience with them consists of 2 forks in the last 15 years. The first was an original Rock Shox air sprung fork that fit a 1 inch threaded headset. A friend in Spokane gave it to my son, Sean, but it didn’t fit his bike. We stuck it on my first mtn bike, eliminating the original rigid fork. Having ridden motorcycles in the early days, I kind of understood the value of suspension, but didn’t really think it would make much difference on a bicycle. Willing to give it a try, and knowing the cost was $0, what I found out was a revelation. Forks are worth the fiddling and the cost, at least they used to be until they got to be more expensive than the bike itself. I rode on that fork for about 7 years, until it blew a seal. Rebuild kit on a 7 year old fork? Forget it!

My second fork is the one pictured. It’s a Rock Shox Indy XC, and came with my Klein Hardtail. I haven’t pulled it apart since a few days after I bought the bike, but if I remember correctly, it has a metal spring and some neoprene spacers. The first thing I noticed was that the sag with me on the bike took up about half the travel, which was only about 80mm, if that. I started checking around to see if there was some kind of spring kit or spacers that could compensate for my weight. The fork was about 3 years old by then. Kits for a 3 year old fork? Forget it!

This called for a trip to the basement. I found a wooden dowel with a diameter that fit well into the shock tube. I cut two pieces about 1 inch long and dropped one in each tube, then reassembled the fork. Yeah, it reduced overall travel, but it reduced sag to less than ¼ of the overall travel and still seemed to work ok.

One thing to worry about with suspension forks is cracks and breakage. Losing a fork during some hairy descent result in a pretty ugly situation, and being ugly enough already, I don’t need to add to the image. I inspect the fork regularly, especially around the steerer tube, saddle, and fork tube tops. So far, there is no bending, cracking or wear that would warn me of potential failure. So far so good.

I got together with some guys for a full moon ride last night in the preserve. We made up a group of 7, me being the geezer, 4 guys in their early 40s and two who were 9 or 10. The two little guys dropped out after about 45 minutes and their dads escorted them home, joining us a short time later for another hour of riding. It never got bright enough to kill the lights, but it was a beautiful, warm evening with some guys who turned out to be a lot of fun. It was definitely my kind of ride, intermediate difficulty with a bunch of guys who weren’t out to impress anyone. It doesn’t get any better than that!