Trust me...
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They MUST have anticipated most of the feedback they were going to get after their reveal was going to be negative. Right?? I guess any publicity is good publicity.
so I perused his instagram page a bit more, and a few entries lower there's a video (https://www.instagram.com/p/BjS-CfOhq1Q/?taken-by=killed_by_death) of him riding into a really techy descent with a 90° corner at the top. I watched it while thinking about this fork (since it led me there). If the bike had been equipped with this fork, that first hit over a rock would essentially push the wheel back while his hands and bar kept moving forward. Eventually, the wheel would be pulled over the rock, suddenly liberating itself, and you'd be jerk/bounced forward. the thought of that terrifies me...
but maybe it's as others have implied, you'd get used to it after a while?
lol talk about sketch entry to that section of trail. No thanks...
This was a characteristic of the Girvin linkage fork. It had a touted “j” axle path. So when you hit a root, the wheel would compress to the rear.
If you didn’t have enough momentum, it could stall you out and actually push the bike backwards.
Granted, that was very low speed. At high speeds, the Girvin fork....nevermind
is that thing ugly!You can remove vast portions of the Sea to Sky trails off your must ride list if this isn't your thing. Slow tech crawling into steep hold on for life chutes is kinda a thing here. Some people (aka kidwoo) think we're crazy for enjoying it.
the resemblance is uncanny. can we get a linkage analysis of this guys limbs? i sense design infringement.
I knew they were alien legs, but couldn't remember which ones. Thank you!
Might be the best thread here in a while, almost like the old days. I really do want to like this thing and don't really understand the @dw hate in some of the comments. He has been an amazing asset to our sport and also a great contributor to this site since the beginning. I do however have a hard time understanding the 'math' and the need/pricing on this fork though. It's very easy to dismiss something because it's different...I was w/ a bunch of buds at rampage this week and everyone kept saying 'i'd never hang that on my bike because it looks ridiculous'. I'm still trying to keep an open mind, linkage forks have never been 'cool' but in certain situations you need to realize certain people might know more than us. It's pretty ignorant to dismiss it because it's 'ugly', which I don't actually know it is. Crucify me if you'd like.
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as one who's not afraid of unconventional tech and/or aesthetics (it's actually kinda sorta growing on me), i'd totally give one a go - if there were tangible benefits. but not at that price. even half the price would be a stretch. how they think this will be a sustainable business venture boggles the mind.
I am still kinda expecting them to say "nah, we aren't doing that, just fucking with you."
Patiently waiting for their product #2.
Patiently waiting for their product #2.
I do think price is a barrier to entry, I didn't expect this when I heard of the platform.
They cater to a specific income niche, that's pretty easy to note. Given they said the first batch is 2500 units they surely have something else in the pipeline.
On the subject of its distinctive appearance, I'm not dismissing the fork because of this. But Because it costs more than my actual bike. Then again, it's a new product looking for a market niche. Once the tech trickles down and the concept is solidly tried and approved, I wouldn't say i would turn away from it. I mean, I don't think I'm the only one here who has learned to skip the earlier generations of any bike related product in order to avoid being used as a paying beta tester.
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Product #2 will be the low quality carbon version that is 100g heavier and all for the low low price of only $2000. Oh and lower quality internals in the squishy bits too. Everyone will be rushing to buy that one.
Or......
They're just waiting for Cannondale to realize they are no longer the leader in weird looking unreasonably priced forks and bingo, licensing talks.
What do Californians know about mtb? Open, fast, rocks (?) ... and grass. See my user pic for reference.
I’ve long been interested in trying a well executed linkage fork. I’d want travel in the 150-200mm range; if it proved to be a major improvement I could see myself coughing up $2k more readily than I would for a wheelset.
I think it's a testament to the challenge of the design that they didn't go for 150mm. I feel like that's the sweet spot for fork travel- enough for enduro bikes, enough for longer travel trail bikes, easy to shorten for 130mm 29ers, and a fair compromise for a 160mm rear end. I don't buy and will never buy the "but it rides like it has more/less travel"
Won't work. It has too little proprietary standards for Cannondale to be interested in it.
oh my fucking god.
I've never seen that before
can barey type........
edit: ouch
it hurts....hahahaha
I need help. 
The more I look at it the more it does not seem quite so wrong.
Almost kinda cool in the aforementioned alien way...
One thing though - it be feckin huge! Kinda makes the rest of the bike look a bit malnourished.
Put one on the front of something long, slack and low like a 120mm Knolly Fugitive and it may be a shit-ton of fun.
(You may need a bearing distributorship to be able to do maintenance though.)
None of us will now for sure until we get some ride time. And I'm not talking about an hour or two. We have all had a good part of, or our entire riding lifetime on a telescopic fork. We unconsciously deal with their issues and have learned to ride to compensate.
I would be interested to see how people would feel if (at no cost to them) they spent a full month of daily rides on one of these, well set up, then came back to ride their conventional high end fork what the preference would be, perceived positive and negative attributes and and thoughts on why.
( Again - This of course assumes an equivalent level of both spring and damping quality.)
Now for another question - this time for those who have a little experience with frame design.
Is there anything you would do to "optimize" your frame design to complement this fork?
The more I look at it the more it does not seem quite so wrong.
Almost kinda cool in the aforementioned alien way...
One thing though - it be feckin huge! Kinda makes the rest of the bike look a bit malnourished.
Put one on the front of something long, slack and low like a 120mm Knolly Fugitive and it may be a shit-ton of fun.
(You may need a bearing distributorship to be able to do maintenance though.)
None of us will now for sure until we get some ride time. And I'm not talking about an hour or two. We have all had a good part of, or our entire riding lifetime on a telescopic fork. We unconsciously deal with their issues and have learned to ride to compensate.
I would be interested to see how people would feel if (at no cost to them) they spent a full month of daily rides on one of these, well set up, then came back to ride their conventional high end fork what the preference would be, perceived positive and negative attributes and and thoughts on why.
( Again - This of course assumes an equivalent level of both spring and damping quality.)
Now for another question - this time for those who have a little experience with frame design.
Is there anything you would do to "optimize" your frame design to complement this fork?
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I'd start with a target price tag of 6 000$US for the frame. Full-Crabon. Multiple pivots and a linkage-driven shock, which will be enclosed in the frame (à la Bold Cycles). Only a proprietary shock will fit.
Seems like people are upset they're not included in the target market.
There's also the annoying factor that when people pay a lot of money for something, they justify it in their head as the best thing ever, so finding unbiased rider reviews might prove difficult. You probably wont meet a rider who plunked down 2700 on a fork who spends their time talking about how crappy it was (at least within the first year or so while they're still set on justifying it).
But those factors aside, I'd be very curious to ride it. I don't find telescoping forks to be detrimental to my fun, I find them generally pretty easy to handle and very predictable, and the dampers that exist for them are pretty fucking good these days. I think it's going to be a tall order to beat the other offerings on the market right now straight up, and not just make a few incremental gains in one place and a few incremental sacrifices in others. It seems to me like traditional forks definitely seem to be getting into marginal gains territory, with more and more gimmicks and less and less damper improvements going on. Doing something wildly different seems like the best bet for a big performance upgrade.
Linkage forks have been around for awhile, and they've been tested on motos and blahblahblah. Maybe that's the case, but there is a whole lot of tech that works great for a bike with a huge engine that weighs 200 lbs that can easily get wheelspin on a grippy tacky section that might not work as well on a bicycle with only the rider as the engine, and vice versa. Losing 40g here and there on a moto isn't quite as much of a big deal as it is on a bicycle, where those marginal gains adding up to a 3-4 pound difference is very noticeable on the trail. I know this is about suspension, not weight, but point being that you make different demands for a bicycle to maximize performance than you do for a moto.
And dw is not wrong that there are things that could be improved on with front suspension. I'm excited to see where this is in 5 years, and just because it's out of my price range right now doesn't mean that it sucks forever and I hate it.
There's also the annoying factor that when people pay a lot of money for something, they justify it in their head as the best thing ever, so finding unbiased rider reviews might prove difficult. You probably wont meet a rider who plunked down 2700 on a fork who spends their time talking about how crappy it was (at least within the first year or so while they're still set on justifying it).
But those factors aside, I'd be very curious to ride it. I don't find telescoping forks to be detrimental to my fun, I find them generally pretty easy to handle and very predictable, and the dampers that exist for them are pretty fucking good these days. I think it's going to be a tall order to beat the other offerings on the market right now straight up, and not just make a few incremental gains in one place and a few incremental sacrifices in others. It seems to me like traditional forks definitely seem to be getting into marginal gains territory, with more and more gimmicks and less and less damper improvements going on. Doing something wildly different seems like the best bet for a big performance upgrade.
Linkage forks have been around for awhile, and they've been tested on motos and blahblahblah. Maybe that's the case, but there is a whole lot of tech that works great for a bike with a huge engine that weighs 200 lbs that can easily get wheelspin on a grippy tacky section that might not work as well on a bicycle with only the rider as the engine, and vice versa. Losing 40g here and there on a moto isn't quite as much of a big deal as it is on a bicycle, where those marginal gains adding up to a 3-4 pound difference is very noticeable on the trail. I know this is about suspension, not weight, but point being that you make different demands for a bicycle to maximize performance than you do for a moto.
And dw is not wrong that there are things that could be improved on with front suspension. I'm excited to see where this is in 5 years, and just because it's out of my price range right now doesn't mean that it sucks forever and I hate it.
oh yea for sure, "generate forum hate" is the #1 design criteria for the bike industry
bringing another version of one of the most widely ridiculed things to ever exist in biking to the table? pretty sure they knew this was coming...
and lets be real, the people in this thread willing to look at it objectionably, have always been a part of DW's fanbois anyway...
I also find it pretty ironic that they hung the most complex fork on the front of a single pivot bike...even if there are a million pivots between the two.
also, one of the reasons things like orion never took off in moto is that those riders are so in tune with what the bike is doing that changing it up doesn't necessarily make things faster, even if it's better. They know exactly how their bikes feel and ride, and therefore can ride them fast. Not that any of us really push our parts to 110%, but I wonder if, even if the fork is objectively better, this fork won't be faster.
also, one of the reasons things like orion never took off in moto is that those riders are so in tune with what the bike is doing that changing it up doesn't necessarily make things faster, even if it's better. They know exactly how their bikes feel and ride, and therefore can ride them fast. Not that any of us really push our parts to 110%, but I wonder if, even if the fork is objectively better, this fork won't be faster.
i don't think it had anything to do with the moto riders. that industry is so big the companies pretty much call the shots in terms of equipment design* (at least something as significant as suspension design). plus, it's a difficult industry to break into, Alta Motors case in point.
*disclaimer: for factory race / production bikes. this doesn't include the one off stuff that travis pastrami cooks up.
Except for the transmission in the Pacifica Hybrid, the eFlite or SI-EVT. That's the same two motor design invented by TRW and used by Toyota, Ford, etc. Very simple, very reliable, and very much not something Chrysler invented on their own.
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