[Closed] what are best forks to buy

for what?

DJ
DH
XC
Trails
All Mountain

Fox 40's for XC. Manitou Dorados for enduro. and Rockshox Darts for freeride and light downhill duties.

stainless ones, made in sheffield preferably

Good call on Sheffield, I really like our Richardson Sheffield ones

My experience:

Pike- Hydrolocked.
Pike- Hydrolocked (blew seals).
Lyrik coil - Moco leak (replaced unit).
Lyrik 2-step. Don't even go there.

Fox - the damping is worlds apart to RS.

anything that says fox or BOS on the side (damping is everything)
(so long as you are happy to have something that you maintain religiosly and have pretty much no warranty on!)

Saying that I have 3 pairs of fox forks and the only attention they get is a regular clean and a service about every 18 months and they are bloody brilliant so dont believe all you read

and also both Fox and BOS make some duff models too (BOS less so but the IDLE Rare has extra adjustment you just dont need and fox TALAS damping has been iffy some years)

DT Swiss

for trails, XC and AM. Just wandering what the general opinion is

Rockshox

Hard to beat Rockshox IMHO... I've three pairs of Pikes and a set of Revelations, the oldest Pikes were bought in March '06 and have absolutely no stanction wear at all. I've not had any reliability issues either.

The best ones you can afford. I like DT Swiss, and Pace before that, never had a problem in just under 20 years of running one model or another.

very pleased with my new coil Sektors

Suntour.

RS1

Marzocchi, except the bad patch 2007-8

I've got a set of 09 Fox 140mm floats - the damping is very good but I'm not too impressed with how progressive the travel gets toward the end of the stroke - theres no way I'm getting full travel - more like 4in.

This seems to be a common complaint with Fox air forks which appears to be caused by not enough volume in the air chamber - not sure if its been rectified in later models.

Another vote for DT Swiss. i have the EXM 150mm which are very plush with great reliability so far.

Gnusmas... so there you have it!!

The Forum's difinitive answer to "What is the best Fork?" is... All of Them.

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Depends on price point, intended use.
Surprised no one has said rigid, 29er, fat bike tyre fork with a 17.809mm ti thru axle yet 😉

Rude-dog, I love my Fox forks on all my bikes, 36s and 32s. You're right about the float 32 though. Had the same issue on some 06. So I just cut the piston rod down by 10 mm and it made the world of difference.

Any that I happen to be selling at the time of the question being posed.

I like Maguras. Made in Germany by our sausage eating squarehead chums. Proper service intervals and dead simple to self maintain.

for me? Open bath damping for simplicity and long life, 20 mm axle for strength and security. No maxles. That will be marzochhi then

Should forks have two legs or three ?

Rock shox have been my best all round experience they are so simple and while they do break (my pikes hyrdolocked) they are really really simple to fix. Just 10 mins 2 o-rings and a bit of oil. Yes they are heavier than for and the damping isnt quite as refined but that is part of the joy they just work.

Marzocchis are simple too but they seem to have a few more bits inside them than RS do and more bits = more bits to break. They are super supple but too heavy.

At the moment and IME RS seem to be to be right in the middle between Fox and Marz in that the take the best of both and that is why they just work.

I had a set of Marzocchi bombers and couldn't find any info on them when I wanted to service them - Marzocchi must be the worst when it comes to technical documentation.

I suppose this shouldn't be a problem if you don't plan to service them yourself but I would definately check for adequate documentaion first before I bought Marzocchi again.

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rudedog - Member

I had a set of Marzocchi bombers and couldn't find any info on them when I wanted to service them - Marzocchi must be the worst when it comes to technical documentation.

Its all there on the marzocchi site - can be hard to ind but I have got manuals and technical / service data from them

Kona project 2's - they seem to last a long time with not a lot of maintenance besides a respray once a decade.