Travel adjust forks

Is there a company making decent ones these days? Considering the trend towards enduroing or riding up down, the geomentry wars and the geo advantages in climbing with a TA fork why aren't they way more popular? They seem like a perfect solution for the type of riding most people do these days.

My bikes go up and down great without messing with the fork travel during the ride. I wouldn't see the point.

I like travel adjustment on a hardtail, but they always feel wrong on the fully.

The Canyon shapeshifter trick looks like a great alternative (though somewhat limiting in terms of frame choice).

Paging 2005 Mark wants your forks.

Posted by: syncro

Is there a company making decent ones these days? Considering the trend towards enduroing or riding up down, the geomentry wars and the geo advantages in climbing with a TA fork why aren't they way more popular? They seem like a perfect solution for the type of riding most people do these days.

While I agree with your idea that they make climbing better. The problem was most travel adjustment systems negatively affected the quality of movement. ie RS dual position air made the fork harsh. The only two systems I used that did not affect the performance of the for was RS U-Turn coil and Maz ETA. The Maz was the best as all it did was crank up the rebound circuit. So the harder you pedaled the lower the front end would drop. Boring fireroad climbs it stayed high in its travel but once you got into tech and started putting down power the fork would drop in travel and made for great tech climbing.

Posted by: heathen

Paging 2005 Mark wants your forks.

This.

Posted by: heathen

While I agree with your idea that they make climbing better. The problem was most travel adjustment systems negatively affected the quality of movement. ie RS dual position air made the fork harsh. The only two systems I used that did not affect the performance of the for was RS U-Turn coil and Maz ETA. The Maz was the best as all it did was crank up the rebound circuit. So the harder you pedaled the lower the front end would drop. Boring fireroad climbs it stayed high in its travel but once you got into tech and started putting down power the fork would drop in travel and made for great tech climbing.

Yeah, that's what I recall as well. I was just thinking  that with advancing tech maybe someone out there had given this idea another go and come up with a product that works well for both tech climbing and descending.

Posted by: earleb

Posted by: heathen

Paging 2005 Mark wants your forks.

This.

I'm building up an extreme mullet hardtail, 29 up front and 24 out back, so a travel adjust fork would really help. It'll be a bike that can roll 4ft drops.

Posted by: syncro

I'm building up an extreme mullet hardtail, 29 up front and 24 out back, so a travel adjust fork would really help. It'll be a bike that can roll 4ft drops.

I feel physically ill..

Travel adjust was amazing I found until the advent of super low BB's/ steep seat angles. On those new school geo bikes it just drops your BB to the ground and is generally awful uphill.

On the old slack seat angle tall bottom bracket bikes the travel adjust did wonders for your climbing geometry and was a genuine game changer. I gleefully ran them for years.

Lol 24/29 that is awesome. Might work there...

Second what Hepcat said. On a modern bike, a TA fork would lower the BB so much that even with shorter cranks we would constantly pedal strike while climbing tech. They would be nice for steep non-technical climbing like in the alps but that is just too narrow a market.

And with current bikes the main limits to climbing efficiency isn't pedaling position but rather sticky tires, downhill-optimized suspension and "longlowslack".

good point about the low BB fellas, it was something I hadn't considered.

The other problem with travel adjust or lockouts for that matter is getting to the bottom of a long descent and wondering why your suspension felt shitty only to discover that you left the adjusters in the wrong place.

Posted by: andy-eunson

The other problem with travel adjust or lockouts for that matter is getting to the bottom of a long descent and wondering why your suspension felt shitty only to discover that you left the adjusters in the wrong place.

The amount of fucking times I get to the bottom of a trail and realize I left my X2 climb switch on...