Purchasing suspension forks for mountain bikes isn’t as straightforward as it used to be. With numerous different styles of frames now available in particular engineered to a style of riding, made by different companies which permit a different size travel fork, purchasing suspension can just be a headache.
Cross country is probably what most of the people think of when they imagine mountain bikers a variety of terrain across hills and mountains normally ridden for fun or against each other or the clock. Whilst this is not the only form of mountain biking today it is certainly more than likely the most well liked in terms of numbers.
Like the frames that they fit, cross country mountain bicycle suspension forks must be lightweight to keep the general bike weight down that may increase rider performance. They’ll require some suspension ( normally referred to as travel ) but may not be rigid in order to allow some type of defense against the bumps and knocks a rider will encounter whilst riding on coarse tracks. The amount of travel routinely allowed on cross country suspension forks is around 80mm-100mm.
Original designs of trail bike forks used springs like you see on automobiles or elastometers however the design trend is now moving toward air sprung shocks. This change of direction in the planning of trail bicycle forks has a number of added benefits ; the absence of moving parts keep the weight small and air sprung forks are easily adjustable. The disadvantage of this change in design is the parts can regularly be more difficult to maintain and take less abuse than their coil sprung counterparts.
Costs of cross country mtb forks can vary significantly with the top of the range models like the DT Swiss and RockShox costing over £400 ( $800 ) to the cheaper Ritchey and Kinesis forks costing a little over £100 ( $200 ).
