[Closed] Trust Performance Message Fork

Even I’m spitting my tea out at the price of it...

their goal is not to make a pinnacle product for racers and elite cyclists, but “to touch as many riders as possible and to make as many riders lives better as possible.”

Uh huh. It looks interesting but I'm not sure they'll be touching many riders at that price.

Looks a bit like the suspension on a Moulton AM

Te shapes of the bits look quite similar to current fork bit shapes, so perhaps like they would be amenable to mass production out of cast magnesium etc.

I like its intention “to touch as many riders as possible and to make as many riders lives better as possible.”

Very few forks have that level of philanthropic intent, which is probably why it costs so much.

Yey,  $2700 fork,  brilliant

Forget the price - it's a lot.

Look at the technology.... every other 'Cool Kid' has tried to re-invent front bike suspension. Yet the vast majority of bikes (push bikes and motorbikes) have telescopic forks. That tells me that there must be a very good reason for that.

It may be the high price of 'better' technology but there are many, many other things that could be the reason.

It uses my name, can I please have a free one? It worked for Jeffsy .. 😉

Its way too expensive.

But really do any of us think when riding about "wow, wouldn't this ride be better if my fork tracked better" ?  Probably not.

Remember those anti dive forks, they may well not dive under braking, but they didn't catch on.  Probably because they looked daft (don't underestimate the power of good looking).  Also, more dive means more grip, just when you brake, so perhaps non-diving forks are not actually better.

So, these trust ones look sufficiently odd to stop a lot of people buying them, even if the price wasn't so high. Would we like a bike that tracked better ?  Does anyone think their modern forks don't track well ?

I've been hurtling down hills on my Capra and Jeffsy for sometime now at speeds that are on the verge of being a crash, but I've never felt the forks were letting me down.  It normally my crap skills.

This is very hard to do, it's all bespoke and Dave Weagle's a genius BUT damn that's a lot of money for a fork!

It's a proper step change but it's in line with the mark up on ENVE rims so no surprise. I'm sure they'll do well enough and when they can do a lower price point alloy equivalent I'm sure it'll fly.

Will be very interesting to see how MX and Road M/Cycles pick it up . . . .

It's interesting for sure - but I can't help thinking that adding eight pivots and going from one air spring to two must add a hell of a lot of friction versus a standard fork. Flip side is removing binding due to flex, I guess - maybe it evens out.

2700 is a hell of a price tag.

In the review/advertorial/publicitiy release, it states that flex reduces stiction.

So my question is... does it?

It certainly feels like the opposite. Put front brake on and push the uppers through the stanchios on a flexy fork and it glides through it's travel, but take front brake off so theres some vertical loading on the bushings and it feels more stictiony-er.

Also, won't it need a much beefier axle to keep the right and left linkages in check?

I'd certainly have gone with a 20mm "DH" axle to force the industry a little but looks like they're playing ball with the stupid 15mm thing. at least for now. Would love to see the 200mm version.

Q comes to mind though is 140mm enough travel? Does the quality of the travel trump the quantity in comparison to a 150m tele fork?

In the review/advertorial/publicitiy release, it states that flex reduces stiction.

So my question is… does it?

Someone asked that on the front page, I think that's a journalist losing the technical nuance in translation. Copy and paste of my post on the story:

Nice idea, but the needle bearing lefty design offers almost friction free travel and a removable damper. The use of a through shaft damper is novel in the context of MTB forks, with a taller lefty chassis you could always drive the air spring off the top of the damper shaft and still achieve a sealed damper with no air piston.

“Adding flex to a stanchion fork reduces initiation force.” ….. how does that work then?

I think that’s lost in journalistic translation, telescopic forks are built with a fairly slack tolerance between the bushings and the stanchion, that way oil can circulate through the bushings and when the fork flexes it can flex a fair way before the bushings completely bind on the stanchions.

Q comes to mind though is 140mm enough travel? Does the quality of the travel trump the quantity in comparison to a 150m tele fork?

Why would it have to, plenty of 140mm travel frames around.

Also, more dive means more grip, just when you brake, so perhaps non-diving forks are not actually better.

Does it? Wouldn't the fork be preventing at least some of the weight transfer from affecting the wheel, at least for sudden braking?

A non telescoping fork wouldn't stop you from weighting the front deliberately.

I've got one on order, just need to decide which bike to put it on

Modern forks have been around for a long time and have provided the best all round solution so far, but now they have been developed to the point they can't get any better - it's all tiny fractions of a percent improvement here and there. Lefty's were much better in terms of stiction, but the spring and damper performance wasn't quite as good as a decent conventional telescopic fork so overall benefits are probably very slim if any at all (I had a Lefty for 3 years) - but the benefits I noticed were having actual suspension under braking due to vastly reduced stiction - your forks do effectively lock up under braking - the stiction is overcome for the bigger hits, but for lower level small bumps they are effectively rigid. A Lefty under braking tracks better and has much better grip , both symptoms of a better performing fork. So now we're at a point where conventional forks are the major limitation in performance now geometry has been pushed further and rear suspension set ups honed. Therefore this then causes companies to start re-exploring alternatives, hence the apparent increase in alternative options we seem to have had recently. Modern manufacturing and materials has taken weight out of the designs (previously probably a limitation) and enabled the structure to be built into the pivots and linkages, and costs are coming down...though still far from competitive over conventional forks, but prices will continue to come down - it's just a function of volume.

The problem is people are conditioned and used to current conventional forks so anything different is interpreted as 'not as good' as people have learned to compensate for their fork shortcomings which have become so normalised we don't notice, so will take some time to get over that initial scepticism. I hope its the future for MTB forks. A far superior engineered solution.

In many ways you're far better off blowing $2500 on forks rather than a frame. You'll get far more performance improvement over a better set of forks. Saving a couple of hundred grams on a frame isn't really buying you any real world performance benefits and geometry is just a function of shape and form rather than technology, so once the optimal geometry is established anybody can copy it so all frames come to a point where they're all performing basically the same.

When your riding down your most techy trail though, whats holding you back ?  The forks or your skill ?  Id say its skill most of the time.

I'm sure they work well – Dave Weagle's no fool when it comes to suspension. And the price... well you can either afford it/think it's worth it or you can't/don't.

But there's something I just can't get past...

They're so very very ugly.

The only good-looking linkage fork ever made came from AMP.

When your riding down your most techy trail though, whats holding you back ? The forks or your skill ? Id say its skill most of the time.

Or the fatigue from the previous 15 miles of riding on a fork that doesn't perform as well as this one?

It's a combination of things isn't it? Skill, bottle, component performance, familiarity with the trail, how tired you are, who you're riding with. All sorts.

Why would it have to, plenty of 140mm travel frames around.

Sorry I was wrong, it's only 130mm of "contour" travel and is designed to suit bikes "designed around 130mm to 150mm of travel" so the question still stands.

Is there more non-"contour" travel or is the 130 equivalent to 150mm of telescopic?

Would love to give one a go but at that price it's a lottery win away right now.

Sorry I was wrong, it’s only 130mm of “contour” travel and is designed to suit bikes “designed around 130mm to 150mm of travel” so the question still stands.

Depends what they mean by contour travel, the vertical displacement of a conventional 150mm travel fork is only 135mm, so maybe that's what they mean, their 130mm travel with an axle path keeping the trail figure approximately consistent through the stroke is about the same as a 150mm travel telescopic fork on a 65deg HA.

It starts with 'reinventing xxxx'.  Just for that they can go **** themselves

I think there is something like Sticktion when it comes to new stuff.

We are probably going to have normal forks forever, just slight improvements to them each year.

Are there any examples of a solution that is completely different to the previous one and it catching on ?

You could say disc brakes, but motorcycles were using them for years, its just that the took a while to be made smaller and lighter for mtb.  Perhaps uppy/downys, but then we were manually dropping our saddles.

I love stuff like this.

I might not buy it, but I'm glad companies keep trying different things.

Very brave of DW and I salute him.

Upside down AMP/Girvin, copied from Lauf.

And @leffeboy, if reinventing is a word, it just shouldn't be. Doesn't make sense. The dictionary can go **** itself.

Looks cool mind, will it fit the Thule on my A5?

This the third (or moreth) recent linkage fork effort (from memory).  To the extent that the technical spiel makes any sense, it is exactly the same technical spiel as put forward for the others, the standard and well-established theoretical advantages of linkage forks.  With a different manner of technical implementation.

Not sure that is brave, more like being (or hoping to be) the commercially savvy operator who gets the timing into the market right.  I assume they are testing the water with a high-end product before piling in with a cheaper mass-produced effort.

"I can’t help thinking that adding eight pivots and going from one air spring to two must add a hell of a lot of friction versus a standard fork."

It'll have miles LESS friction - there is a huge amount of friction from the bushings in a telescopic force, and the more load they're under, the greater the friction. Have you ever found a fork where checking the sag gives as consistent a reading as on the shock? I'd guess there's maybe a tenth as much friction when static on the back end of my Spitfire (with eight bearings and two bushings) as on the Pike up front.

The only fault I can see with this design is the price. So I'm sure they'll sell plenty - it's expensive but look at what people spent on carbon wheels!

"The team expects deep penetration"

For that price I reckon they should.

Looks great to me, if have one if Iwere minted.

It sure looks fun to clean.

One of the key reasons why alternative front forks are rare is that to get the full benefits of alternative designs needs a non standard frame.  Trying to get lever forks on a standard frame means too many compromises..  firstly you end up still turning the suspension whereas the best of the designs separate out these two different movements and secondly you still have the high up weight and long levers of a conventional fork thirdly braking forces are still controlled by the suspension parts

Having ridden BMW motorcycles with properly designed alternative front suspension the advantages are huge when you are no longer putting suspension forces thru the steering   You can run much softer springing as braking forces do not run thru the suspension so you get a much plusher ride, much better small bump absorption and a controlled amount of dive.

Suprised not to see this yet.

I'm not totally sure brake forces matter that much on a mountain bike, what with it only being powered by gravity and a pair of legs (especially when powered by my spindly ones!)

A motorbike is heavy (relatively speaking) and very powerful.  It needs to brake, hard, from 3 figure speeds.

A mountain bike is light (the rider weighs multiple times more) and even on a bonkers downhill run, the speeds involved are relatively modest (a 50mph hard stop  would be truly unusual and massive, probably WC only riders!). Because the bike is light and rider heavy the rider can place and use their mass to good effect to change the dynamics  (even very light sports motorcycles weigh a lot more than their riders).

And the rougher it gets on a bike, the less you are going to be able to brake whatever your suspension does. If you yank the front brake on, in a big rock garden, or on a jumble of roots, you're off generally

And the smoother is gets, the less you care about dive

And dive, broadly is good, it loads the front tyre, and allows your body mass to move forwards controllably (because the spring rate of the suspension transfers the load, and not the stiffness of the structure (brake hard on a rigid bike and it doesn't dive at all (well except the front tyre squashing, and yet, you can brake harder and later on rougher terrain on a suspension bike precisely because the front wheel can move (so the effective spring rate is lower)

One negative used to be that dive steepened head angles, and whilst this is true, with modern geo (65deg angle, 800mm bars and low BBs) i can't say i've ever really noticed, certainly not to the point of a feeling of a loss of control under braking (in fact, my longwheel base, long Front centre, 180mm suspended, bike, with 800 mm bars and 203mm twinpots at both ends pretty much just STOPS, there's no time to worry about stability or a loss of control, because you've stopped by that point anyway....  😉  I guess perhaps when we all rode hardtails, dive was perhaps more annoying because the back didn't squat, and those hard tails probably also had 640mm bars and a 75deg HA, so it probably matter a lot more back then eh??

^^ Good post that, it even made sense to me which is saying something! Lol

You load the front tyre just as much with no dive.  If you do not have dive because of the geometry ( not just racking up the damping) you still have small bump absorption when braking and you can run shorter travel as you don't use half of it under braking. and also you need less compression damping as again the damping is not having to resist braking forces.

It was weird when used to teleforks to feel and see the front suspension on a lever setup still working when braking hard.  Using teleforks you really have almost no suspension when braking hard.

And the rougher it gets on a bike, the less you are going to be able to brake whatever your suspension does. If you yank the front brake on, in a big rock garden, or on a jumble of roots, you’re off generally

Not with a fork that separates out the braking and bump forces - the suspension keeps on working even under hard braking so you can brake over bumps without losing grip

Unless I'm drunk and/or stupid (equally probable on a Friday evening) then that fork carries sixteen cartridge bearings plus a damper with a very high leverage.  Does the 250 hour service interval entail a shock rebuild plus the cost sixteen new bearings? Lifetime warranty or not, surely they must wear out faster than telescopic fork seals?

Damn it tj, I thought I had my head around this, now I think I see what you are saying too....and it also makes sense.

£300 in the CRC sale by january i guarantee it

The suspension might keep working one a system that somehow, magically doesn't dive, but the front tyre still has to continue to carry both the brake force and your weight, so it makes little difference. In case a) you fall off with the front suspension compressed, in case b) you fall off with it less compressed............

(dive increases the weight on the front wheel (for any given rider position and bike Cofg) because the bike tilts forwards, which shortens the wheelbase and the bars drop, pulling the rider forwards with them)

However, i don't think it really matters, brake hard on an MTB and you stop, ime, the pros go fast because they DON'T brake much.....  😉

Maxtorque - there is nothing magic about antidive geometry and if your tyre is tracking the ground accuratly because the suspension is working properly because its not all used up by braking forces then you have more grip.

do you not get weight transfer when you have a rigid fork - of course you do - you can still get the rear wheel in the air thus 100% of the weight on the front  Yes the shortening of the wheelbase will bring a tiny amount more weight onto the front wheel but its a minuscule effect compared to the weight transfer that comes from deceleration

one a system that somehow, magically doesn’t dive

It's not magic or even geometry. I think linkage forks that don't dive actually have the caliper mounted on a linkage so that the braking force counteracts dive.

indeed, and hence needs brake torque to provide the antidive moment. So off road, in the rocks, roots and mud, how does your front tyre generate that brake force?

I'm not arguing for or against AD by the way, simply pointing out that i don't think it's as important as some say.  In fact, given how adaptive we humans are, the relatively minor geometrical or dynamic effects as a result of suspension architecture really don't make much of a difference.  I bet Sam Hill could ride a fixee faster that i can ride my full susser.....  😉

It's the same with forks / rear suspension.  if one system was really, demonstrably and statistically better than any other, the wc downhill would be won by one architecture all the time. And yet it isn't, the rider is what counts (and a bit of luck too 😉

Sure, one architecture might be fractionally better under any given set of circumstances, but lets be honest, today, where we are with MTBs, we already have bikes that a riding about as fast as is physically possible on current forks and suspension.  When you read these "new technology set to wow the crowds" articles, you often get pages of technical waffle about geometry and anti-this and anti-that, and then you get to the last paragraph where the journo actually rides the bike and guess what, it rides like, er, a bike!

from the article on the Trust Fork:

"The Message was superior in at least three scenarios: riding down a stretch of chunky gravel from the end of the single track to the base of the ski lift, its ability to absorb chatter and vibration better than a telescoping fork was noticeable. Hitting rocks, roots and ruts was less jarring than on a telescoping fork. And the corners rode differently in a good way, though it’s hard to describe exactly what we were feeling with such a short time on board."

With the given that we have no idea on the settings of the comparitor forks (you can easily make your new fork seem better by just providing people with poorly set up "reference" btw) it seems its mostly like riding a mountain bike!  Anything that needs more ride time to notice the difference, despite being able to swap directly between comparitors on the same trail and on the same day......