If you could have a full-custom fork for about $1,000...

[CountZero]

Here's a hypothetical question:

If, for about the price of a high-end, production Fox fork - about $1,000 - you could have a fully customized, flawlessly manufactured, and personally tuned suspension fork, what would it be?

As for me, I want:

26" and 29" wheel configurations
Axle to crown appropriate for all-day adventure bikes
5.5" to 6" total travel
1" of really good negative travel
1" progressive bump stop or hydraulic bottom out
Linear spring rate
4 lbs ideal weight
Fore-aft stiffness of a BoXXer or Dorado
20mm Maxle (I think 15mm is stupid)
Pressurized cartridge damper
Two stage, shimmed and ported rebound damping
Two stage, shimmed and ported compression damping
4-way external damping adjustment (high and low for both compression and rebound)
No external travel adjustment
No "pedaling platform" (also stupid!)
Comes with spare parts

Incidentally, if it weighed less and was stiffer than a Lyrik or 36, would you put a double-crown fork on your adventure bike?

[BikerMiker]

Are you asking for your friends in CO?

You know more than pretty much everyone in the forum about suspension design and set up so you might not get many responses.

I have the perfect fork for you but it's on my bike! I think that my dual crown fork is the shizz. The carbon steerer, 1.5 to 1.125 bearing set up and forward-ish facing drops of the Spec'd fork on my 120mm bike (08 stump pro carbon) was pretty badass. Stiff, light, linear air spring... I turned off the Brain thing but it rode great.

mk

[bikerjay]

Negative travel sounds really silly to me. Most of the time its called pre-load or sag. Normally pre-load is tuned to 10-20% of the total travel based on rider preference. With a 5.5-6" 1" of pre load is normal. On a 10" travel fork 2-3" of preload is normal.

1" progressive bump stop or hydraulic bottom out - Those sound like 2 very different things. I take bump stop to mean bottom out bumper. Most all forks have this in the form of a rubber bumper, elastomer or occasionally a spring. They are normally a very high effective spring rate and simply stop the fork from being damaged by a really hard bottom out in the event of an abnormally hard hit. They are normally a lot less than 1". A simple progressive helical coil could easily take care of this. Having 1" of the spring at a very high rate would do this it would also shorten the usable travel by an inch.

Hydraulic bottom out is a different thing all together now were talking about the damper rather than the spring. This would be achieved by a non linear compression damper that ramps up towards the end of its throw.

[CountZero]

Mike, I agree, your double-crown fork is pretty terrific. Just one friend.

[mark w]

Here's a hypothetical question:

If, for about the price of a high-end, production Fox fork - about $1,000 - you could have a fully customized, flawlessly manufactured, and personally tuned suspension fork, what would it be?

As for me, I want:

26" and 29" wheel configurations
Axle to crown appropriate for all-day adventure bikes
5.5" to 6" total travel
1" of really good negative travel
1" progressive bump stop or hydraulic bottom out
Linear spring rate
4 lbs ideal weight
Fore-aft stiffness of a BoXXer or Dorado
20mm Maxle (I think 15mm is stupid)
Pressurized cartridge damper
Two stage, shimmed and ported rebound damping
Two stage, shimmed and ported compression damping
4-way external damping adjustment (high and low for both compression and rebound)
No external travel adjustment
No "pedaling platform" (also stupid!)
Comes with spare parts

Incidentally, if it weighed less and was stiffer than a Lyrik or 36, would you put a double-crown fork on your adventure bike?

You must mean the new school Boxxers. The older 32mm chassis was a noodly piece of kit IMO.

I'm on the fence on the DC AM fork. The current set up on my Ibis is quite a bit stiffer up front than out back. I don't know that I would gain much by going even stiffer with a dual crown and there is the drawback of reduced turning radius. I recently switched my DH bike to a Totem and it feels much more flickable.

The fork you describe seems like a superlight Lyrik 160 with the Mission DH damper from the Boxxer Team/WC (external hi/lo comp AND hi/lo rebound)... I'd be happy to be a test pilot :)