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What is the worst fork you have ridden??

13K views 92 replies 60 participants last post by  jms 
#1 ·
The worst I have ridden was a Trek branded fork that was on my MB2 when I bought it in the early 90's.
 
#6 ·
t2p said:
Rock Shox 1 .... RS1 or whatever it was called ....... horrible .......
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A Manitou 1 felt like a quality motorcyle fork compared to that pogo stick ........ okay - maybe I am exaggerating a tad .....
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The Manitou 1 avoided the pogo stick problem by never using its travel due to stiction.

The only time I notced the travel on my Manitou 1 was while climbing because the brace was so noodly that the brake pads would rub on each pedal stroke as one leg compressed. The fork felt com-pletely different with the addition of a brodie brace, almost tolerable.
 
#7 ·
I know, I know

Rigid: Tange Switchblades for sure, so harsh it made me not want to ride.
Suspension: McMahon, did not do squat.

re: the RS-1 comments. I didn't think that fork was as bad as some others that came out later. If you ran lighter weight shock oil in it, it was actually fairly plush given its limited travel.
 
#8 ·
Boy named SSue said:
The Manitou 1 avoided the pogo stick problem by never using its travel due to stiction.

The only time I notced the travel on my Manitou 1 was while climbing because the brace was so noodly that the brake pads would rub on each pedal stroke as one leg compressed. The fork felt com-pletely different with the addition of a brodie brace, almost tolerable.
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I can't remember ........... did they have 25mm of travel - or was it 2.5 mm travel ? ....... (those were the days !) ............
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I rode with a guy that had a Manitou 1 outfitted with Ti stanchions ..... etc ..........
 
#10 ·
Edson and IRD Forks

The Australian made Edson (sp?) fork from the early to mid '90s. Really long axle to crown length to jack the front of the bike up, bugger all travel and had performance that made Manitou 1 forks seem like the were hi-tech!

Also the IRD fork from the early 90's had a lot of flex and did'nt really seem to do anything.
 
#13 ·
Scott Bouncyball

Luther said:
The worst I have ridden was a Trek branded fork that was on my MB2 when I bought it in the early 90's.
Remember that Scott unicrown telesoping fork that allegedly used friction as the damping medium? boing...Boing...BOING AAAHHHHH [into the bushes]!!!

The Trek (Showa) that came on my Trek 9000 was a close 2nd.
 
#14 ·
Giant Sabre (or Sorber?), because of two broken crowns. People who have experienced that know you will have a very unpleasant landing than. After the second I replaced fork including the rest of the Giant Cadex. ;)

Friend of me rode a Marzochi XC500. He jumped it in pieces multiple times and if it's wasn't already collapsed it leaked.

Weird is that the best fork I have ever had and still have is form the same era; the RondWP HydroPro 2. For XC the absorbing qualities are sufficient, ok. Besides this the fork does it's work in a hardly noticable way. Still very convincing. Consider it beats my 2000 SX-LT easily - no match, in a comparison that's like a pogostick! Also take into account this RondWP HP2 fork is almost entirely machined. :cool: No plastic bits. Top notch finishing that can hardly been seen these days.
 
#16 ·
I had a RockShox Indy C for many years and loved it. It wasn't until I bought a bike with a Marzocchi MXC when I realized what a pile the Indy was.

The Indy never did get serviced in the 5+ years I rode it. I don't think it would have made a difference though.

endoMaster said:
One of the crappiest forks I've ridden was a RST Mozo RM-120. How crappy you may ask? It gives the fork on my Wally world beater a run for its money and makes the RST Gila T4 that came on my Hardrock feel like a Fox Float in comparison.
 
#17 ·
This is an easy one.........

Without a doubt, the worst fork I've ridden and possibly the worst fork ever made, was my first suspension fork, around 1994. It was a Girvin Proforx. This was a telescopic Girvin unlike the later and much better linkage forks. This thing flexed so much while turning or hitting bumps that it was actually scary. I put an Odyssey brake booster on it which helped a little, but not much. The travel was about 3/4" and the overly soft elastamers broke down after about a year, which reduced the travel to about 1/2". About the only thing not horrible about that fork was that it was sorta light. A ridgid fork with a fat tire would have been far superior, but back then 1.95 tires were all the rage, so I kept it for a couple years before upgrading to a first gen Manitou SX, which was light years ahead in performance.
 
#18 ·
grawbass said:
Without a doubt, the worst fork I've ridden and possibly the worst fork ever made, was my first suspension fork, around 1994. It was a Girvin Proforx. This was a telescopic Girvin unlike the later and much better linkage forks. This thing flexed so much while turning or hitting bumps that it was actually scary. I put an Odyssey brake booster on it which helped a little, but not much. The travel was about 3/4" and the overly soft elastamers broke down after about a year, which reduced the travel to about 1/2". About the only thing not horrible about that fork was that it was sorta light. A ridgid fork with a fat tire would have been far superior, but back then 1.95 tires were all the rage, so I kept it for a couple years before upgrading to a first gen Manitou SX, which was light years ahead in performance.
I gotta wonder about some folks in this thread... this one in particular... its like they've all had memory loss issues already. Or they're comparing them to forks that they ride today.

For example, the girvin proforx was stiffer than anything rockshox or marzocchi had at the time, had 2.1" of travel for the XC version and 3" for the LT version (which was good enough for I think it was Mike King to win a world championships DH on).
 
#19 ·
Oh crap, you got me started...

The Sid Whirled Cup was easily the worst fork I ever rode. The worst fork I ever sold was... the entire remainder of the rockshox line. I know someone has to target the lightweight fork market, but to underbuild a FORK to keep it light & make it cheaper... just reckless. And the forks retail hasn't reflected the huge cheapening of the product. And I thought we were over the "stupid light" fad. We were getting about a hundred hours on a set of bushings. A hundred hours. Sixty on their seals. This is atrocious, but at least you know you'll be able to get parts. They're a big enough company, they're not going to disappear, right? Nope. When you need replacement bushings, you get the famous "We only support our products for three years..." speech. Wich means your cost per hour of riding their products are pretty damn high.

We made more money selling RockOx's but had to drop em once we started losing customers. People were pissed, and they were pissed at us for selling them this crap. And I always liked my Mag 20s. I could go on for a thunderous hour about the disappointment that company's turned out to be.
 
#21 ·
the worst fork i ever rode was the Kona Z-Link fork. I can't find a pic of it, but it was just like the Harley "springer" fork. It had an elastomer spring and flexed so much when you turned it felt like the bike was going to throw you off. And that was on a parking lot ride - off-road must have been frightening on these things.

kinda looked like this;

 
#22 ·
DeeEight said:
I gotta wonder about some folks in this thread... this one in particular... its like they've all had memory loss issues already. Or they're comparing them to forks that they ride today.

For example, the girvin proforx was stiffer than anything rockshox or marzocchi had at the time, had 2.1" of travel for the XC version and 3" for the LT version (which was good enough for I think it was Mike King to win a world championships DH on).
Are you kidding me..........this thing was an absolute noodle and I only weighed about 150 lbs at the time. Granted I may have exagerated on the lack of travel a bit, although with sag, it was never getting 2.1 inches. A riding buddy at the time had a Mag 21 that was much stiffer torsionally. Are you thinking of the Girvin linkage fork?
 
#24 ·
grawbass said:
Are you kidding me..........this thing was an absolute noodle and I only weighed about 150 lbs at the time. Granted I may have exagerated on the lack of travel a bit, although with sag, it was never getting 2.1 inches. A riding buddy at the time had a Mag 21 that was much stiffer torsionally. Are you thinking of the Girvin linkage fork?
#1 I've owned that fork since 1993, and I still haven't worn out the bushings (after thousands of hours of riding), I raced expert XC on it, and the flex was no worse than any other 25.4mm diameter CrMo stanchion fork of the time. In fact, given how the fork had as much stanchion/slider overlap as a Manitou fork (rockshox and marzocchi forks had about half the overlap of manitous), they steered very well. You really have to be a moron to compare linkage forks to telescopic ones though in terms of steering precision. But that's only going to last as long as the bushings, which Girvin Vector forks and Amp forks went thru like crazy. And I know as I still own an original Amp F1 fork, and was an Amp dealer, and have owned the vector also.

#2 Forks of that era were designed to be run WITHOUT sag. Perhaps you're confusing preload with sag.
 
#25 ·
LQQK said:
The Australian made Edson (sp?) fork from the early to mid '90s. Really long axle to crown length to jack the front of the bike up, bugger all travel and had performance that made Manitou 1 forks seem like the were hi-tech!

Also the IRD fork from the early 90's had a lot of flex and did'nt really seem to do anything.
I don't remember the Edson, or did you mean the Ellison Titanium fork? Looked like a Manitou 1.

IRD used a goofy triple-clamp crown that allowed fore/aft flex in the stanchion tubes that was supposed to help with brake chatter or something but while maybe a good idea for their rigid fork was a silly thing to do to the suspension fork also.
 
#26 ·
As to the scott fork, almost every non-oil damped fork of the period relied on friction of some sort to aid the damping. Remember, back then the theme was suspension not being fully active or plush because people still wanted their bikes to sprint like fully rigid hardtails. So friction damping worked to keep the fork from bobbing and this is why the rockshox dampers used a spring-loaded blowoff circuit in the compression damping (think ancestor to platform damping).

As to the Joe Murray Z-Link (originally called Vector but didn't wanna go thru a fight over the name with girvin), well, the principal was sound but their bushing tolerances were not, so the leading link fork quickly got sloppy. It also only had 1.25" of travel.

And as to trek forks, they did at least have TRULY adjustable compression and rebound damping adjustments going for them, not simply a lockout adjustment like Rockshox forks did.
 
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