Mountain Bike Forks

A good mountain bike fork will determine a great or bad day of riding.  For example, my friends and I went mountain biking in Moab, Utah at a place called Slick Rock.   I was using a Schwinn  Moab mountain bike with a generic suspension fork.  My other two friends used mountain bikes with regular forks and no suspension.  We biked all day and realized just how rugged the slick rock actually was.  Expert bikers were using full-suspension bikes and here we were ill-equipped.  We were lucky that our bikes did not have any malfunctions as the forks that were on my friends bikes could have easily bent due to the pressure and steep declines of some of trail.  A bent fork will basically ruin your whole mountain biking trip and should be avoided at all costs.  We made it out of Slick Rock, but I learned my lesson that day.  Having a mountain bike suspension fork is a must for those who are serious about mountain biking.  The force of a jump on a non-suspension could bend your fork and could cause you to take a pretty nasty spill.  Investing a few hundred dollars in a good fork will ensure that you can enjoy your mountain biking experience without destroying our equipment.
 
Suspension fork technology is fairly recent and keeps improving with time.  Suspension travel is the amount of vertical movement that the fork will give and is measured in millimeters.  Over time the travel on the fork has increased from eighty millimeters to two hundred millimeters.  Two hundred millimeters is generally used for difficult, steep, terrain.  If you are a hardcore mountain biker, some shocks have travel  that have the capacity of three hundred millimeters.  Other functions of suspension mountain bike forks are that some forks have the capability of adjusting the travel of the shock so that you can easily adjust the fork to for a better ride of stiff terrain or rough terrain.  Other shocks are able to lock out the fork so that you can use your mountain bike for conventional biking or to get around town. There are two types of technology for most popular mountain bike forks.  One suspension fork uses coil springs and another uses compressed air springs.  The coil spring fork is much heavier but the weight can be reduced through various materials.
 
So what kind of front mountain bike fork should you purchase?  First you should look at your bike’s frame.  If you have a relatively old style bike that was build in 1990, then a suspension is not suitable for your bike as it could affect the way the mountain bike handles on various terrain, which would defeat the purpose of buying a new fork.  Make sure to set a budget and stick with it, some things that will affect a mountain bike forks cost is the type of suspension fork, brand, and materials used inside the fork, and the travel of the mountain bike fork.  Plan on spending around $250 for a decent fork, but you can also spend considerably less for brands such as Rockshox.  These forks will give novice and beginning mountain bikers enough fork travel to do beginning to intermediate terrain (about 1 to 2 inches of travel).  Perhaps, you do not even need a shock.  If you are planning on using your bike for routine travel such as for traveling to work or light exercise, then you can get a conventional fork and won’t need a suspension fork.
 
The most popular forks right now are made by Cannondale (single fork shock), Marzocchi, and Rockshox.  Your best bet is to go to your local bike store and price out your shocks.  Test out the travel on the shock and determine whether the shock is suitable for your bike.  Go online and see what deals you can get on the same brand of shock and install, or pay someone to install the shocks for you.  Either way, you’ll have a higher chance buying the mountain bike fork at wholesale than purchasing the bike at a retail outlet.