More offset is going to be theoretically a faster steering feeling, right? I thought the benefit of low-offset was slowing down the steering without having to keep lengthening the front end. I bet if you add travel at the same time as you change offset, you’d have a hard time sorting out what made what difference.
I do seem to remember Gary Fisher’s great innovation of the mid-late 00’s was putting higher offset onto 29er forks to get their 29ers to be as twitchy as 26" XC bikes.
Transitions claim on the Scout was that by having a shorter offset they were putting rider weight more squarely on the contact patch and improving cornering feel / reducing wheel flop/noodly front end stuff. I dunno if that tracks logically, I’m not very clear on how everything ends up affecting handling.
the MTBro Science in the industry is kinda maddening, the reduction in offset itself does next to nothing for moving the contact patch around relative to the wheelbase
the change makes the steering higher trail by directly increasing the wheel flop
reducing the offset by ~1cm makes the steering handle as if the HTA were a few degrees slacker, but without causing the telescoping fork to just bind under load from being stupidly slack (it also reduces the front-center by ~5mm instead of lengthening it by ~25mm, but that’s gravy)
SO what will I notice if I throw a 1cm longer fork with 1cm more offset my bike?
Honestly, I bet the higher stack height and resultant weight shift will make too big a difference to isolate any change associated with the fork.
But I am purely speculating.
i’d say if you like the ‘feel’ of it currently, i’d not look to change the offset and just up the travel so you can ride higher in the steeps. i’ve had both a pike rct3 and current gen ultimate and honestly haven’t developed a strong preference between the two. it’s a good platform, and as noted above, just get the new airspring if it’s cannibalizing the first few mm of travel.
fwiw next time i get a fork in that travel category i’ll be going with a helm. haven’t ridden one but have fondled mkII and they seem quite nice. i like the ease of adjustability for travel and ramp up and am interested enough in tuning to want to play with negative spring pressure. it’s a well designed product and i just dig cane creek as a company.
Bike is riding assy with a 150 fork, so I tried ordering a 130mm air shaft.
After installing it and repressurizing, it now has 160mm travel.
Fucking hell, Fox
Don’t you just need those little spacers inside to reduce travel? My dj has a 130 mm travel reduced to 100mm and it just took installing some plastic doodads inside.
Unfortunately with the NA2 air springs you have to get a whole shaft assembly like with the rockshox gear. I miss the clips and spacers…
The whole thing is complicated by the fact I bought it second hand and the po took off the tune Id sticker and it’s a 34 e-bike fork so it uses 32 internals…
Speaking of forks…
Im going to buy a new one…
Steep and Cheap has an MRP ribbon for about 700$ Which is what I was planning to spend on a Pike when they eventually re-stock.
Do I wanna fuck with the MRP? Seems like a solid nerd fork with hella adjustability. Only issue is that my bike is 37mm offset and the fork is 44mm… how much would that fuck with me?
there is one of these for sale in bst.
That is the coil version. Im going for the air spring one. Also that has even more offset and is a 29. But obviously I didnt say anything about size any whatnot. Thanks for the heads up tho.
I have the manitou mattoc which has all the adjustment in the world. And I do fiddle with it between laps pretty often based on how I feel like what was happening. If that’s helpful.
The answer to the fork question is always to get the best fox you can afford and then drop the latest grip damper in it if it doesn’t already have one.
I ended up just getting a 2021 Lyrik. Was only 750 and should be a big upgrade over my 4 year old base model yari.
the new debonair spring is pretty great. Glad I added it to mine. Not quite sold on going to 180 on the enduro just yet. but I am still weak now, so it may get better for the general trail stuff. but sub 64* is really out there.
Ill be at 150 but am tempted to try out 160 on my scout which would put it at like 65. I wanted the option of going bigger because I anticipate buying a new frame next year and moving parts over.
I’m shopping for some new cranks. Are the 9120 cranks $200 better than the 8120? I like the different preload on XTR, but the only other difference is a wider Q on the XT.
I sold the Nordavinden and my 04 Gary Fisher so I’ve got some money burning a hole in my pocket. What’s the hot buy in 29er XC hard tail now. Are plus bikes still a thing?
Trek Roscoe and X-caliber stuff looks nice as does the Salsa Timberjack SLX.
Say 1500-1700 ish complete.
nah plus is kinda dead. 2.4-2.5 is where most non weenie stuff evened out to. plus was generally too slow and heavy for a not-a-fat bike. tires had to be paper thin or properly turdly