My early-days success story of awesome single crown forks is mentioned above, so here's my worst purchase.
First to paint the picture. I was just transitioning from my Free-ride huckstible self, to my aspiring DH racer self in late 2002. I was going from a god-awful looking Norco VPS Buzz with an AMAZING Polished Marz Super-T, to a 2003 Norco Shore and convinced myself (or was convinced) I needed "A Racer's Fork". Well, this was the first year they did multi-teared models of the Boxxer, and I bought the cheapest one the offered, the Boxxer "_Race_". I rode it for two seasons, including my first several trips from the Island to Whistler, and MAN, was that thing complete garbage. For a guy trying to figure out how to go fast, that thing was probably only good for training you how to avoid unnecessary front-wheel contact. It worked at slow speeds, but it spiked like no other fork I've experienced. Eventually there was an "improvement" introduced by snapping one of the tabs off the garbage plastic damper, but it really didn't help. It was like there was a slide hammer coming up at the crowns, every time it needed some high-speed damping. I went from there to a full Norco DH bike in 2004 with the stock 888, and that fork was like a buttery dream-come-true compared the Boxxer "Race".
Oct. 7, 2021, 7:51 a.m. - Mammal
My early-days success story of awesome single crown forks is mentioned above, so here's my worst purchase. First to paint the picture. I was just transitioning from my Free-ride huckstible self, to my aspiring DH racer self in late 2002. I was going from a god-awful looking Norco VPS Buzz with an AMAZING Polished Marz Super-T, to a 2003 Norco Shore and convinced myself (or was convinced) I needed "A Racer's Fork". Well, this was the first year they did multi-teared models of the Boxxer, and I bought the cheapest one the offered, the Boxxer "_Race_". I rode it for two seasons, including my first several trips from the Island to Whistler, and MAN, was that thing complete garbage. For a guy trying to figure out how to go fast, that thing was probably only good for training you how to avoid unnecessary front-wheel contact. It worked at slow speeds, but it spiked like no other fork I've experienced. Eventually there was an "improvement" introduced by snapping one of the tabs off the garbage plastic damper, but it really didn't help. It was like there was a slide hammer coming up at the crowns, every time it needed some high-speed damping. I went from there to a full Norco DH bike in 2004 with the stock 888, and that fork was like a buttery dream-come-true compared the Boxxer "Race".