Hi. I'm new here, hope I've found the right place!
I have a Trek Dual Sport 3 which came with Suntour NEX forks. It's been fine for the stuff I do, a mixture of road and bridleways, easy cross country stuff. However, the forks are knackered. If I go out off road at this time of year they seize up. I take the lowers off, tip the water out (!), grease them up and they are OK again, but they only last one or two rides before I have to do it again. I'd really like to replace them with something that just works. I don't need high performance, just comfort and low maintenance.
The main problem I see is that they are 63mm travel, and proper forks seem to start at 100mm minimum. If I put on a set of 100mm travel forks will it completely ruin the geometry and make the bike horrible to ride? Can I fit a spacer to the rebound stop to reduce the travel?
The other problem is that it's a 1 1/18" threadless stem and 29" wheel with QR dropouts. Which appears to exclude the vast majority of forks available.
Any suggestions on what I can replace them with? I don't want to spend loads, under £150 or so. I'd prefer used if possible, and I don't mind having to rebuild them if necessary.
Maybe something like a Suntour Epicon set at 80mm would work. That's a much better fork than the low-end Suntour forks.
I used to have an older Dual Sport, it was a great commuter/gravel bike. I had 80mm Reba 29" forks on it, which let me put a 2.2" tyre on the front but slackened the bike by a couple of degrees. If you're only going to run 40 mm gravel tyres, you might be able to fit a 27.5" MTB fork to keep the front a bit lower. You would have to actually check the tyre clearance on the fork though.
Thanks, I'll have a look for some of the Epicons.
I'll also look into 27.5", I hadn't thought of that. I'm using 1.8" Mud Kings at the moment and they measure under 28.5" diameter, so might squeeze into a fork designed for fat 27.5" tyres.
