Tuesday, April 22, 2014

I have no idea how suspension forks work



I have this bike that I don't talk about very much. It is a Kona Kula Deluxe from 2006. I bought it in like 2009 (2010?) and I rode it for awhile, but after this race in Massachusetts that had a section with 3' of standing water, it didn't work well for awhile. I've finally fixed most of it. For some reason, I decided to replace the suspension fork. I don't know that much about those things, but I decided to upgrade the Fox Vanilla R to an F32 Float 120 or some such thing. I bought it on ebay and it said it had 100mm of travel, but it's got way more than that. It's actually pretty awesome once set up correctly for going fast downhill. However, it raised the front end and I seem to have no braking power on loose terrain. The raised front end makes it hard to climb steep stuff (keep popping wheelies) and the lack of braking makes it hard to stop. I also go downhill a lot faster with the suspension fork thingy, so I'd hope for more stopping power, not less. Lower my bars? Is that all I need to do? Fox makes a shorter travel-ma-jiggy, but it costs money. What advice do you have?

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