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Have a Dekerf Elysium hardtail that's a little over 10 years old. Love it. There's not a lot of detail on it as they were handmade by Mr Dekerf. I understand that the frame geo was made for 80-100mm forks.
So the qn is, if I stick on some rigid forks with 445mm axle to crown length and a 43mm offset will that match nicely. Sorry details on my frame are so scant, but wonder if it was designed more to 420-440?
Fwiw, I'm currently running 2009 Rockshox Rebas Race at 100mm and feels good.
Ta
Measure the length of your Rebas. See what difference there is between their length and 445mm. IIRC, 10mm=0.5deg head angle change (ie, shorten your fork by 10mm and the head angle steepens by 0.5deg - roughly). Then you'll have an idea what the rigid forks will likely do to your handling.
According to this thread: [url= http://www.pinkbike.com/forum/listcomments/?threadid=78006 ]pinkylinky[/url]
05-08 Reba 85: 458mm
05-08 Reba 100: 473mm
05-08 Reba 115: 488mm
Reba 80: 453mm
Reba 100: 473mm
Reba 120: 493mm
So you'd be shortening by 473-445 = 28mm = approx 1.5 degrees steeper. This will make your bike an inch lower at the front (so you'd need an inch of stackers to keep your bars at the same height) and the steering will become less stable at speed/on steep stuff, twitchier etc. But climbing and switchbacks will be easier. Whether that's a good thing depends upon your riding.
The calcs above don't take sag into account though, so you may wish to take the amount of sag you run off the Reba length, as your rigid forks won't sag (obviously!). So if you run with 25% (25mm) sag, you're only losing 3mm of height, which would then mean your handling would be pretty much unaffected (apart from having no suspension!).
Hope that helps.
The fork you mention sounds like a good place to start if you like the handling now. 445mm is a good match for 100mm forks, 475mm of the Reba less 30mm or so / ~30% sag. Working off fork length less normal sag levels is ok, but the 'working height' of a fork off-road is generally shorter than that so anything down to ~425mm may work, depends on the feel and weight distribution you prefer.
If you've got a king headset and feel your front is too low, you can add 5 mm with this baseplate :
[url= http://www.aspirevelotech.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=AVT&Product_Code=PHS529 ]CK +5mm baseplate[/url]
It's not much, but can help
that's great and good to understand a bit more! Thanks all