Beggars Would Ride
Coerced Evolution
“You know what I want for Christmas?” I asked, before plowing on to answer before things got out of hand.
“I want a modern version of a Girvin Vector fork, with 140 or 150mm of travel, and a modern damper where those spongy donuts used to be.”
Without even taking his eyes from the Trust fork that he was throwing casually into the bed of his pickup, where it clattered to an unsightly rest among sundry 26 wheels, several GT RTS frames and Giant NRS bikes in various states of decay, some old Hammerschmidt cranks and a single crown Maverick fork, Simon laughed and said “That has to be the dumbest Christmas wish ever. Those things sucked!”
"Did not!”
“Did too!”
“Come on, for the time, they were awesome! Everything sucked back then, by today’s standards.”
“Look,” Simon sighed, “if there had been any merit to the design, then someone would have evolved it, and we’d be using them today. But there wasn’t, so we’re not. End of story.”
This was not the first time Simon and I had talked through some variation of this conversation, and it won’t be the last. Simon is a pragmatist, who prefers to deal with the practical realities of the here and now instead of the what-ifs. I’m the opposite; I spend way more time than I should thinking about how things could have evolved if they had the chance. This, in the eyes of many people with bigger brains than mine, is a waste of time. It’s daydreaming.
So be it. I still want a modern Girvin Vector with at least 140mm of travel. I think it’d be awesome. Here’s why.
The Girvin Vector was pretty damn sweet “back then”. It had a slightly rearward “J” shaped axle path that could be set to follow two different paths, one more linear than the other. It had long, stiff legs that ran from the upper link to the axle and was, compared to the telescopic forks of the time, several orders of magnitude better at managing flex in any direction you cared to measure. It had a pretty simple dual link that compressed a pair of big yellow MCU marshmallows. Okay, that’s where things began to not be so awesome. But still, in a time when forks only had 50 or so millimeters of travel and half the industry was using some sort of gummy bear for both spring and damping material, it wasn’t exactly lagging behind the current technology either.
But there was a very specific limited range of usable head tube lengths that would work in order to mount the upper link on the steerer in the right place. This also created a very specific set of minimum distance limitations for where the stem could be mounted. And the quality control was, ummm, questionable. Link bushings went south pretty easily for some riders. The pivot mount holes in those big long shiny fork legs ovalized with alarming regularity for many more riders. Elastomers would split in half. But damn, when they were working, they ate up bumps like nothing else could even come close to.
It is entirely possible that my personal Girvin Vector was magic, because nothing ever went wrong with it in the course of two seasons of racing, and it then kept on trucking under another rider for several more years. If I had to go back and live those years again, and was asked to choose between a Vector and a RockShox Mag 21, I would take the Vector a thousand times over. I spent SO MUCH BILLABLE TIME during 1993 and 1994 plucking tiny chunks of O-ring out of the rebound damper ports of RockShox’s finest that I am to this day amazed we decided to throw our lot in with hydraulic suspension. Those forks were the alleged pinnacle of the nascent mountain bike suspension movement and they were expensive, flexy, miserably damped and incredibly fragile. But noooo, those Girvin Vectors were junk. Better stick with the gritty misery of Manitous or the “why is my Mag 21 stuck all the way down, again” status of RockShox.
Sentimentality be damned. My fingers hurt just from the memory of those shitty adjuster knobs. I tried to find some step by step "how to pick the chopped up o-ring out of the damper orifices" or "how to replace your broken brake arch" images, but all I kept finding were pictures of old mechanics crying.
I present for discussion the following possibility: We decided to stick with telescopic forks for the evolution of mountain biking not because they were clearly superior at the time, but because they most closely mimicked what we already were most familiar with – telescopic motorcycle forks.
Now, let’s talk about Roger DeCoster.
In 1979, Roger DeCoster (aka The Man) had racked up five Motocross World Championships for Suzuki, and was facing the twilight of what had been a long and incredibly successful career. His body had paid a price. His wrists, in particular, were playing merry hell with him. So, he met this Italian dude by the name of Valentino Ribi who was prototyping this quadrilateral linkage front suspension. DeCoster preferred the way the Ribi performed, and the way it did not dive like the telescopic forks of the time (this was peak suspension growth era in motocross racing, where travel had gone from about 6 inches to 12 inches in the course of maybe four years, and fork damping – basically holes drilled in rods – had a lot of catching up to do all of a sudden), and he convinced Suzuki that this was what he needed to race successfully. Suzuki was falling apart at the managerial level around this time, and The Man beat feet next season to race for Honda, who were becoming the dominant force in motocross. One of the stipulations he brought to Honda was that they allow him to use the Ribi fork.
Breaking the cardinal "no vertical framed image" rule here, but come on. The Man! And the most awesome fork that mighta coulda been something...
DeCoster only raced one year for Honda before retiring. During that time, Honda threw some radical interpretations of the Ribi fork into play, but ultimately shelved the project. Some say that the complexity and expense of the fork compared to the evolving telescopic forks was the reason. Others speculate that riders who were not The Man were more used to the familiar divey nature of telescopic forks and had trouble adapting in a positive way to the Ribis. Still others say that Honda, having a big stake in Showa suspension, put a bullet in the development of the Ribi because it posed a threat to the dominance of telescopic forks, which Showa made a metric buttload of. And there went the last time motorcycles tried to do anything serious with linkage forks. With the subsequent knock on effect that mountain bikes, when it came time to start down the Darwinian garden path, would look to motorcycles, and say, “Aha, telescopic forks it is, then.”
Goddamn, Honda had some juice in the '80s! Sure, I may be biased because of my linkage fork thing, but just lookit that! 125cc TWIN, one of maybe four ever made, straight up handbuilt unobtanium stem to stern. And it may sound like I am unfairly kicking puppies, but that fork looked so cool. Way cooler than a Trust. Almost as cool as a Girvin Vector even...
But wait, let’s speculate some more! Technological evolution, at any given time, requires several factors to coincide. There’s the initial “Eureka” of design innovation. Then there has to be some degree of materials technology and application to allow a thing to even get made. And if you want to make a whole lot of that thing, there has to be a similarly capable manufacturing landscape which is concurrently undergoing its own evolution. Aaaand you might need to have a buying public willing to give it a shot. So, if we were to go back 100 or so years, we’d find a motorcycle and bicycle landscape absolutely inundated with linkage fork variations. Most of them were pretty damn rudimentary in execution, and using friction dampers, but there were several designs even way back then that Valentino Ribi probably drew inspiration from.
Now, what if rubber seal technology or tube smoothness technology or bushing tolerance technology had been just a hair slower? And what if friction or mechanical damping had taken hold? Let’s pretend that a decent fork seal didn’t show up until the 1970s (actually, given the way things go with my dirt bikes these days, I’d argue that the current state of fork seals is pretty damn sad), and people had been evolving all these multi-stage, incredibly intricate friction and mechanical methods of damping. People would look at oil dampers and rubber seals and shake their heads. “That’ll never work.”
The reason I have been squirreling all this around in my head right now is because of Cam’s piece the other day about T-type derailleur setup. There was some consensus in the comments that this seemed a whole lot more complex than cables and springs. Much as I am not really a big fan of the battery world, the setup on this new stuff is ridiculously easy by comparison. We just think it’s not – because we have spent our entire lives learning how to do it the way we know how to do it. This other way is new, therefore it’s harder. Except it isn’t, but it feels that way at first. We did the same thing with disc brakes, remember? Anyone here want to go back to trying to get the toe-in just right on Dia-Compe 987s? Anyone? I'll wait. No?
State of the art, 1930. Ariel linkage girder fork, friction damper, grease fittings!
So, yeah, friction dampers, ewww. That’s stupid. Linkage forks, what a dumb idea. Or not.
Maybe, just maybe, we think that telescopic forks are so much better than linkage forks because this is what we know best. We are more invested in telescopic forks. We have been developing and refining them in every single aspect – material application, manufacturing, damping technology – building on what we know, expanding our database of knowledge every step of the way. Anything new, anything different, anything divergent from the status quo that comes along is faced with an enormous handicap when faced with that massive wealth of experience and knowledge about The Thing That We Are Very Familiar With And Also Very Invested In.
Evolution is not always about survival of the fittest. It is often about survival of the luckiest, survival of the most conveniently situated, survival of those who happened to be in the right place at the right time.
The Trust fork rolled away in the back of Simon’s pickup, destined for some storage unit purgatory. Coulda woulda shoulda, right? There was a lot that was not all the way baked with that fork, and it was in no way given a good shot at survival thanks to an astronomical price tag and looks that only a mother could love. But it was not all bad, either. There was potential there.
I still want a modern Girvin Vector. Or a scaled down Ribi. 150mm travel, tunable axle path, tunable leverage rate, all the modern damping sweetness. Same weight as a Fox 36. Doesn’t have to be by Christmas. I’m not smart enough, but I bet there’s someone out there who knows what to do. Status quo can suck it.
You may sayyyyy I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one... Photo - Stefan Haehnel from bikepacking.com
Comments
KavuRider
1 month, 1 week ago
So I have 2 of the Trust Shout forks. I still use them, I bought them when Trust was winding down (so I didn't pay anywhere near the astronomical price they wanted).
The Shout has some quirks, but honestly, I think it is one of the best forks I have ridden in some ways. It tracks better than anything else I have ridden, to the point where going through a switchback, I was oversteering, used to the flex in my telescoping forks. It feels like you are on rails. The damping feels slower, but at speed, it just ate up anything in its path. I ride South Mountain in Phoenix, AZ all the time, so if you have ridden here, you know its just rocks on rocks.
Quirks - well, it doesn't pop like a telescoping fork. Takes more body english to get it in the air. If you land rear wheel first, you will slap the front end - my guess is that since its a rearward-path, when you land like that, the fork has nowhere to go, so it kind of packs up. The steerer is carbon, that always made me a bit nervous. The plug in the steerer is tough to get seated to properly pre-load the headset. And I have an annoying small air leak in one of the legs, probably a seal somewhere.
Service is also interesting - you take the entire damper cartridge out of each leg. It isn't too bad once you get used to it, but nothing like doing a service on a telescoping fork. I am cannibalizing one to keep the other running at this point.
I just recently switched over to a Fox 36 170 and I'm having to get used to it all over again.
Looks wise - it is certainly polarizing. Most people think it looks awkward, ungainly, ugly. The optical illusion that it puts your front wheel 2 feet in front of the axle is kind of strange. It looks like you have a 50 degree head angle. I personally think they are kind of cool, but I like weird stuff. I think there was a lot of promise with the design, its too bad it didn't take off.
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Morgan Heater
1 month, 1 week ago
I always wanted to try one of those, but never enough to fork out the $$.
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Deniz Merdano
1 month, 1 week ago
Fraser with the correct application of Vector...but also the seatpost gripshift.
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JT
1 month, 1 week ago
That is onehelluva take on a sui shifter! LOVE. IT.
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Cooper Quinn
1 month, 1 week ago
We've all seen the Half-Nelson clips, but who's got the video of him riding chutes in Naramata on that thing?
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Deniz Merdano
1 month, 1 week ago
I will dig it up
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Kenneth Perras
1 month, 1 week ago
Jeez calm down guys; I can't hand out that many likes.
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Perry Schebel
1 month, 1 week ago
*like*
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LWK
1 month, 1 week ago
this? https://structure.bike/
Seems these guys have been around for awhile now. PB did a review several years ago when they first came out and my memory is they had nothing but positive things to say about the "fork".
I think dont underestimate the impact of vanity and looks in how things develop. Simply, these things look awkward and weird.
Random unrelated comment. You mentioned your dirt bike again, you've mentioned your aversion to e-bikes in previous articles and of course you love bikes. Some sort of article weaving those three things together in terms of the pros, cons, likes, dislikes, perspectives would be interesting.
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Cr4w
1 month, 1 week ago
As someone who had (and still owns) a Lawwill Leader and an IRD TL5 I always liked linkage forks. The Lawwill was generations ahead of the undamped elastomer forks of its day with its Risse air shock.
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Mike Ferrentino
1 month, 1 week ago
I spent a lot of time on one of those IRDs. And embarrassingly, when I first received the test bike, having never seen this fork and with no instructions of any kind, I installed it backward. 100 feet later; "Jeez, this bike steers weird..."
Only ever got to take one quick spin on the Lawwill, always loved the design.
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Cr4w
1 month, 1 week ago
One of the products I most regret selling. I still have the Lawwill deep in storage but the IRD is long gone and that's not a vintage part you see come up for sale very often.
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JT
1 month, 1 week ago
My 2 years riding a Leader are what still drives my thinking that linkage forks have a LOT to offer if/when someone does one right.
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Cr4w
1 month, 1 week ago
I was really hoping the Trust was going to start us on that path.
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SuspensionLab_JonoChurch
1 month, 1 week ago
I was kindly given one of those Lawwill forks a few years ago - I've been meaning to dive in to it one day as its a cool product!
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roil
1 month, 1 week ago
Can we talk about how modern mountain bikers love their six link high pivot rear suspension paired with a fancy pogo stick up front?
I'm all for a linkage fork. Adroit's concept from 2018 lives rent free in my head. https://bikerumor.com/new-adroit-linkage-suspension-fork-uses-a-rear-shock-to-give-you-more-control/
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Andy Eunson
1 month, 1 week ago
Funny that. I was thinking the same thing. Or the opposite direction, the Luddite that says hydraulic disc brakes are too complex but mechanical disc calipers, with a myriad of moving parts is more simple.
Looks different is the biggest stumbling block for a linkage fork. If linages are so bad, shouldn’t we all be riding single pivot rear suspension? Orange bikes are still doing well as far as I can tell. Do they know something other manufacturers don’t? Aren’t 4 bar suspensions just single pivot with funky linkage driven shocks?
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Mike Ferrentino
1 month, 1 week ago
Adroit seemed to just vanish sometime in 2018, not a whole lot of time after building those sweet vaporware sticks.
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Perry Schebel
1 month, 1 week ago
speaking of re-imagining old concepts, check this out (gamux / manitou build):
https://hayesbicycle.com/blogs/news/looking-backwards-to-see-forward-manitou-fs-ii
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Brad Nyenhuis
1 month, 1 week ago
This comment has been removed.
Morgan Heater
1 month, 1 week ago
That thing is pretty awesome, but the seat tube solution makes it seem like it's mostly a joke.
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Cr4w
1 month, 1 week ago
Also, the Rocksled guy continues unabated. I hope he figures out something that works!
https://www.instagram.com/rocksled_suspension/?hl=en
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Morgan Heater
1 month, 1 week ago
Looks pretty fun to try. Projects like that make me wish I had a machine shop.
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Mark
1 month, 1 week ago
I think what you're after Mike is some version of BMW's Telelever technology which has the benefits you're looking for. It also better fits the aesthetics of the avg image obsessed mtb'er - but I know that doesn't describe any of us. Unfortunately it's patented so I doubt it's coming to the mtb world anytime soon .The other thing is going to be weight and complexity on a bicycle, but if you dare to dream...
https://www.bmwmotorcycles.com/en/engineering/detail/suspension/telelever.html#/section-even-more-technology-in-detail
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Mike Ferrentino
1 month, 1 week ago
Hard no. Telelever is a BMW marketing ploy that may also have something to do with trying to partially counteract the rising under acceleration weirdness of their shaft drive bikes. It adds mass everywhere, has telescoping legs AND a sprung shock, and is basically the same as slapping half of an automotive front end onto a motorcycle. BMW - answering questions no motorcyclist ever asked since 1932!
Whyte Bicycles tried it with their mountain bikes, which all exist in the same "kill it with fire" part of my brain alongside Telelever suspension, zipper-convertible hiking pants and portable bluetooth speakers attached to riding packs.
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Mark
1 month, 1 week ago
So what you're really saying is you have a secret lust to ride a telelver ebike wearing zipper convertible hiking pants while blasting out El Chambo's Macaron on a bluetooth speaker. You are a wild and complex individual Mr Ferrentino.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlW7T0SUH0E
I had a highly competent motorcyle bud who rode a telelver bike and really liked its characteristics.
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Mike Ferrentino
1 month, 1 week ago
Telelevers have their fans. So do zipper pants I guess. Probably a pretty big use group crossover there. Bluetooth speakers on mountain bike rides seem to be heavy EDM, jam bands and really shitty dubstep. At least around here...
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Mark
1 month, 1 week ago
Did you ever get a look at a Britten? Some argue it's the best motorcycle ever made.
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Mike Ferrentino
1 month, 1 week ago
I met the man, have the coffee table book, and have even driven past the totally bonkers house he built in Christchurch.
That bike was so incredible. And that it was made by a crew of about five guys working essentially without sleeping for two years since they all had real jobs they had to go to makes it even more incredible.
SuspensionLab_JonoChurch
1 month, 1 week ago
Every time I visit Wellington I probably spend a good hour staring at the one they have on display! Every single part if it is incredible and bespoke
Morgan Heater
1 month, 1 week ago
That looks pretty much like what structure cycles did with their crazy linkage frame.
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Mark
1 month, 1 week ago
Yup, very similar. The difference with Structure is they have a double wishbone and solid fork blades whereas the BMW is single and the forks telescope. Cam did a really good article on it a few years ago that had a lot of good commentary as well.
https://nsmb.com/articles/riding-structure-cycle-works-scw-1/
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DanL
1 month, 1 week ago
I got to play around on the structure when they were out testing on Fromme and it was a great bike, albeit polarising lookswise. It did everything they claimed and the center of mass for the bike and rider is something I haven't felt on other bikes, which is unsurprising given the architecture.
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Adrian Bostock
1 month, 1 week ago
I have a Hammerschmidt in a box, missing one very specific bolt to make it work. I have a dream of using it to make a 2 speed commuter bike. One day maybe I’ll get motivated to make it happen.
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Graham Driedger
1 month, 1 week ago
Hammerschmidt for a bike park rig would be fkn sick too!
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danimaniac
1 month ago
Do it.
My friend Jonas did it for a klunker and it is awesome!
Look for the Rheintritt Lovechild
https://www.pinkbike.com/news/day-1-randoms-bespoked-show-dresden-2024.html
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Perry Schebel
1 month ago
sweet build!
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Merwinn
1 month, 1 week ago
Almost doubling the bike's weight with a 'schmidt!
;D
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Morgan Heater
1 month, 1 week ago
i had the same scheme, but the finicky bb interface and the crazy drag put the kibosh on it. Pinion or single speed is teh tru path.
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Adrian Bostock
1 month, 1 week ago
I have been dragging my feet on this one for a reason. I have a plan to eliminate the washers with a custom ISCG mount. I almost don’t care about the drag, it more about the cool factor then the practically of it.
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Squint
1 month, 1 week ago
The bike shop I worked at as a teenager in the early 90s had a Proflex on the floor, it was the first full suspension most people had seen and blew minds. Also hella expensive, it was pushing $2k IIRC. I think we sold one.
Interesting point about liking what we know, or finding it easier... when I talk to people newly into hydraulic disk brakes, I say they're lower maintenance than rim brakes, but when you do the maintenance (bleeds, flush, etc) it takes more knowledge but is easier.
I feel like with rim brakes and cable derailleurs, someone with a mechanical mind but no experience could kinda feel their way to reasonable performance just through trial and error. Brake pad, meet rim. But the newer stuff takes specific, perhaps non-intuitive steps to set up, and without that may not work at all.
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Curveball
1 month, 1 week ago
Performance metrics aside, I recall grinding up way too many rims with the cantilever brake pads and PNW mud.
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Perry Schebel
1 month, 1 week ago
yep. people who have only known disc brakes don't know how good they have it. riding in the wet on cantis required near daily brake tweaking of some sort; always spinning the barrel adjusters & adjusting cables as things wore, re-adjusting pad angle & toe, sometimes trimming pads as they wore unevenly to try to eke as much life as possible out of them as you were replacing them on a near bi-weekly basis, wearing through rim sidewalls (rim beads blowing off wasn't a rare occurrence) - all that, for shitty, hand cramping performance.
the olden days, they were something.
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Jeremy Hiebert
1 month, 1 week ago
> Goddamn, Honda had some juice in the '80s!
Man, did they ever. Seemingly infinite budgets for R&D, and most of the best riders too. Those full-on works bikes from '82-'85 were works of art, utterly drool-worthy for moto-obsessed kids like us. We took a road trip to watch a national in Millville, MN in 1985, the last year before the production rule. As incredible as it was to see how fast the riders were -- Ron Lechien, Bob Hannah, and David Bailey sweeping all three classes for Team Honda -- we were as blown away by the bikes themselves. I remember lining up in the pits for autographs, and goggling at the rows of works bikes in front of the HRC trucks, in total awe.
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Kos
1 month, 1 week ago
Was that the year local boy makes good Tommy Benolkin was there during his brief factory mx career? Great race, and the Honda pits were, in fact, something to behold.
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Jeremy Hiebert
1 week, 6 days ago
Sounds like he retired around '83, so a bit earlier. The name rings a bell, though. Interesting story, even talks about testing the linkage forks on his works bike! https://www.vitalmx.com/forums/Moto-Related,20/The-Tommy-Benolkin-Story,778292
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kekoa
1 month, 1 week ago
Grafton mag lites were so annoying to adjust. Worse than my dia comps. Discs are better.
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Mike Ferrentino
1 month, 1 week ago
Oof, that's saying something. I had conveniently forgotten about them!
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The Chez
1 month, 1 week ago
I don't miss cantilever brakes ONE BIT. Not one. I still remember laughing at cross racers in the early 2000's for torturing themselves with cantilevers. Discs are way better at stopping and no Kool Stop pad can convince me otherwise.
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Curveball
1 month, 1 week ago
Well, the Kool Stop pads did improve the performance of the cantilever brakes. With the better pads, they got to within 1/100th the performance of hydraulic disc brakes. I have some pretty wild v-brake memories.
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fartymarty
1 month, 1 week ago
Gearboxes on mountainbikes....
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Vincent Edwards
1 month, 1 week ago
I test rode a Viral recently with a pinion gearbox and electronic trigger shifting.
It felt really close to 12-speed XT, but with a few more gears at the high and low end. Being able to shift while coasting is cool.
_
I have a theory that drag isn’t really higher than most of our derailleur setups as we ride them in the real world.
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Morgan Heater
1 month, 1 week ago
I can't personally perceive the drag, but I am a titch slower than most folks on the uphill. It's nice to have gear to blame for my fitness issues.
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fartymarty
1 month, 1 week ago
Having not ridden a Pinion (or similar gearbox) but being a big fan of the idea I think the drag is a non issue unless you're racing. Once you get used to the drag "it is what it is" and you just ride. It's like riding big chunky tyres all year. Once you get used to them you just ride.
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Morgan Heater
1 month, 1 week ago
The pinion drag is definitely less than a chonky rear tire or one that has a slow leak and needs to be inflated.
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Curveball
1 month, 1 week ago
I'd wager that a gearbox likely has less drag than my derailleur setup. Living and riding in the PNW year-round, I'm not real great at keeping it all clean. I'll typically take a shower, drink a beer, and then go to bed before I remember to clean up my bike.
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Dave Smith
1 month, 1 week ago
Will Perry, report to the gearbox chat.
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SuspensionLab_JonoChurch
1 month, 1 week ago
I was with you until the "weight of a 36"......that might be a tough one but I do agree a modern girvin is worth trying. Adjustable mounting points to tune the kinematics would be sweet, I rode the Trust shout for a while and it was incredible and some things, but not good at a few certain situations that were enough to make it a deal breaker. Adjustable mounting points could be a tidy way to dial in how much or how little linkage-ness a rider wanted
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Timer
1 month, 1 week ago
I’m pretty sure that a lot of things in technology and society are down to luck. The belief that we use the best possible things is almost certainly false.
Success in technological evolution doesn’t require being perfect. It requires being just good enough to not die out right away and lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. Certain similarities with biology are probably not accidental.
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Derek Baker
1 month, 1 week ago
I never got to try one of these. The Girvin's were Ok for the time. I personally enjoyed the Amp Research forks! https://www.pinkbike.com/news/now-that-was-a-bike-whyte-prst-1.html
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Fat_Tony_NJ
1 month, 1 week ago
I had the Mongoose branded version. The circlips liked to fall out, and the dropouts bent somehow. I straightened them with an adjustable wrench.
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Andy Krull
1 month, 1 week ago
I rode both the mag 21 and the Girvin Vector. The latter being so much stiffer. It was like two aluminum baseball bats strapped to your bike! Better in every way that mattered at the time.
That AMP linkage fork I tried next on the other hand... the stiffness of cooked spaghetti noodles on your bike. That was bad!
It turns out that not all linkage forks are equal.
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Curveball
1 month, 1 week ago
Every once in a while, those old RS forks would actually go in the direction that you pointed them. Most of the time it was like having a distracted golden retriever on the front of your bike.
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fartymarty
1 month, 1 week ago
_ I spend way more time than I should thinking about how things could have evolved if they had the chance. This, in the eyes of many people with bigger brains than mine, is a waste of time. It’s daydreaming._
The world needs people to ask "what if" otherwise we would be still living in caves clubbing things with clubs.
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Travis_Engel
1 month, 1 week ago
The fate of the Trust forks definitely had a lot to do with luck. Bad luck. If only the guy I recently interviewed about it were able to talk on the record. Given one more generation, I think that company could have made some waves. And not just in linkage forks. Maybe Specialized will figure it out now that they own the IP.
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Morgan Heater
1 month, 1 week ago
The pandemic timing was definitely suboptimal. I wonder if they'd held on until the boom in 2020 if they would have survived.
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Curveball
1 month, 1 week ago
I think production costs were so high that they just couldn't compete with the big players in spite of good design work. Then again, Push is making a very, very expensive fork that seems to be doing well.
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XXX_er
1 month, 1 week ago
" Evolution is not always about survival of the fittest. It is often about survival of the luckiest, survival of the most conveniently situated, survival of those who happened to be in the right place at the right time. "
People say Bill Gates what a genius ! Well probably what really happend is a couple of IBM middle managers wearing bad suits had to pick between operating systems so they flipped a coin to pick Microsoft, the PC architecture was left open because IBM were selling computers the size of a mini van and frankly didnt care but just imagine how different the world might be ?
whats next an artical on the lefty ?
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fartymarty
1 month, 1 week ago
Mike - are you trying to desensitise the general readership to dropbar mtbs?
If so I aplaud you. NSDBMB FTW!!!
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donh
1 month, 1 week ago
Thanks Mike for another great article, I had a Pro-Flex with the Girvin fork briefly in the '90's........it looked pretty cool but we didn't get along well.
I'm pretty sure I still have that copy of MXA from August '79 though!👍
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Mike Ferrentino
1 month, 1 week ago
I told so many people to get Girvins because I loved mine so much. Then I had to handle all their warranty claims and weather their glowering accusatory stares whenever they came into the shop. You were not the only person who didn't get along with them!
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ReformedRoadie
1 month, 1 week ago
A lot of the natural selection here is dependent on the sequence of development.
So many things were hung up on things like rim brakes that caused major design constraints.
Now that discs are universal and dampers have improved tremendously, circling back to the design of a Girvin seems like it could be a solid idea.
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Timinger
1 month, 1 week ago
My first full suspension bike was a 1998 K2 ProFlex 5000 with a Girvin Cross-link fork with carbon legs and a coil-over-oil SmartShock as the damper - which actually worked with a 9V battery. It did steer like it was on rails and you could actually feel the damper work differently in different modes. As I recall, the reviews of the day in Mountain Bike and MBA basically said the SmartShock made it feel like it had another 1" of travel on top of the 3" in front (~80mm) and 4" in back (100 mm). Maybe you wrote one of those reviews Mike?
Here's an old/sold one on PB for reference:
https://www.pinkbike.com/buysell/1008807/
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Peter Leeds
1 month, 1 week ago
What always surprised me was the Honda DH bike; some of you might remember it. It was the RN01 and was NEVER put into production but was only a prototype with a Showa fork up front. At the time it was out to lunch relative to what was out there but given how bikes have developed today with the Pinion gearbox, sadly coupled to motors, but I can see Honda was WAY ahead of the curve on the gearbox and Pinion has probably a lot to owe to Honda for the bike.
And at the time, it was a real shocker. Honda was big into motocross, no doubt, but the DH bike was completely out of left field and took many by surprise, and equally, died out with no fanfare, no followup, no successor. I suspect if anyone has a MINT or EXCELLENT condition RN01 frame lying around it would be worth a pretty penny.
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Mammal
1 month, 1 week ago
Minnaar still has one of his. The first, more complex gear box had too much drag, so what they mostly ran was just a derailleur in a box. Amazing bikes for sure, beautifully polished monocoque shapes.
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Kos
1 month, 1 week ago
Thanks for the Mag 21 o-ring memories. It was always hilarious to see all the little rubber bits…..
And dirt bike fork seals?! Who else here is old enough to remember the “wing and a prayer” approach of putting a teaspoon full of ATF Stop Leak into a leaky fork leg, hoping to not have to change seals (again) on a Saturday before race day?!
Finally, how is there still an unbroken RTS frame still in existence?! Every damn one I had broke at the cross member weld on the seat tube.
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hankthespacecowboy
1 month, 1 week ago
The Roger DeCoster / Ribi example was the first thing that came to my mind when the Trust fork movement was happening. If The Man couldn't get us linkage forks, no one can. Hell, he even made KTM add a link to the back end, but it just seems linkage forks are an innovation that will always be too late in the game, somewhat like RapidRise shifting.
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nothingfuture
1 month, 1 week ago
I'm just going to point out that there was, in fact, at least one motocross fork made by the folks at Trust. I recall seeing a picture of it- likely a prototype (all aluminum? lots of cnc, anyway), but never seeing/hearing anything again about it.
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Mike Ferrentino
1 month, 1 week ago
So THAT'S where all their capital went!
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ReformedRoadie
1 month, 1 week ago
Have we learned nothing from Cannondale?
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Perry Schebel
1 month, 1 week ago
this beast:
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Mike Ferrentino
1 month, 1 week ago
He said a motocross bike, not IKEA furniture!
I kid, I kid... Of course they made one for Cake. Gotta say, that prototype looks a hell of a lot less intrusive/obtrusive than the production Trust Message.
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Cr4w
1 month, 1 week ago
At a glance it looks like the rear end has been pixellated for modesty.
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Mike Ferrentino
1 month, 1 week ago
The whole bike sorta looks that way...
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Adrian Bostock
1 month, 1 week ago
I see these emotos and all I can think is that I want an adult sized electric run bike with pegs for ripping to the grocery store and back.
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Tehllama42
1 month, 1 week ago
I'm just over here dreading the inevitability of suspension designs starting to suck just because active valve switching when finally connected to a properly selected and tuned setup (with actual intelligent data-logging) is going to obviate so much of that.
The really tragic answer is that I'm one of the people with the right technical skillset to herald that dark omen to the community.
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roil
1 month, 1 week ago
Then you should be the one to do it right. Use your skills for good.
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Tehllama42
1 month, 1 week ago
My argument is that once the electronics are done 'just barely right enough', the experience will improve slightly, and suddenly hardly anybody will care about actual damper performance/response, because a servo on a switch pulling from the right data is correct just enough of the time that people will accept them the way they have slushbox automatic transmissions in cars.
Tragically, that same skillset plus my weird background makes it way more lucrative to do 'other' less inherently altruistic things with my time.
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Mike Kittmer
1 month, 1 week ago
Girvin’s make for excellent cruiser bike forks. Kidding aside, loved my K2 version in 1999 that had carbon legs, a coil ‘smart shock’. 9-volt battery and all.
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a.funks
1 month, 1 week ago
The Structure bike which was built around a linkage fork (but with the fork part of the frame design, so it couldn’t be fitted to any other frame) which got incredible reviews. However it came out just before the Covid chaos, was full 27.5 just as 29” fronts were taking over, and required you buy a whole new frame, not just a fork - and had no space for a water bottle.
It seems like fork structures are still the weak point on MTBs - creaking is rife once they’ve had some hard use. Will we get enduro dual crowns or will we get linkage bikes?
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