last night rode my usual trail with the rebas 120mm and 20mm bolt for the first time and I noticed it really made a difference, the wheel felt more like it was blatting its way along and over stuff not being deflected as much and the steering felt more accurate the bike seemed to go where i aimed for, just wanted to share my experience with the STW. I was riding a tuner dw flux with mavic 819 tubeless and conti race kings

I take it you had the same forks and wheel set up in sd before but just now 20mm version hub and fork?

You riding os bars or not?

it's the future

was the ground softer? 8)

Can we have a graph & anal-ysis by TJ please.

Fox marketing dept can use guys like you – give em a call…

Oh just noticed it was RS forks – same observation applies 😉

can't argue with the physics

I tried some QR forks recently, same bike just QR version of the fork.
Definitely makes a difference.
I wouldnt swap back.

It makes a hooooge difference, currently borrowing the 9mm version of my forks as my 20mm ones are off being repaired, same everything else, nowhere near as stiff.

I remember my first ride on Pikes, after swapping from a set of Pace RC40s. I couldn't believe how much stiffer and more confident the front of the bike felt, despite the inferior damping. I haven't looked back since.

On the other hand I've just swapped my BFe from bolt-through Pikes to QR RC41's and don't find an huge difference in stiffness. I noticed more of an issue when going from bolt-through 55r's (which were very stuff but very, very heavy) to the Pikes.

Using O/S bars, I tend to ride along on a chosen line and just hammer thro I lack finesse in my riding so the bolt thro helps alot

i think it shows how much room for improvement there is in mtbs
things are still too based on old school roadie sizes and dimensions
new standards are a pain to adopt like the syntace rear dropouts, tapered head tubes, internal cable routing, wider handlebars,gearboxes, belt drives etc but they make bikes so much better once people actually ride with them

I love the idea of a tapered headtube, I just hate the fact that they aren't retrofittable to my existing bikes.

My old bike with the Pikes has now been upgraded with a short Thomson stem and OS bars. Each modification has added stiffness, which in turn makes the front end feel very confident.

I got to do a straight comparison on the Soul, 07 Revelations with QR vs 09 Revelations with maxle. Same wheels too. There's a wee bit of difference but I was only aware of it for about 2 or 3 rides… I went back to the QR ones as they were a nicer colour, which probably tells you all you need to know about how knocked out I was by the extra stiffness.

It depends though, flexier forks seem to benefit more. Even those QR Revs are decently solid for a trail fork. The latest revs are actually a wee bit flexier and seem to have been designed with maxle in mind, the older ones always feel like it's a QR fork with a maxle wedged on.

PJM1974 – Member

"I remember my first ride on Pikes"

Pikes would be stiff with a QR, that's why they weigh as much as they do.

Now try some decent tyres 😉

Oh yes it does make a difference but claiming it was just the fork may not have been true.

And yes get shot of the Contis.

My first experience of 20mm maxel forks was with some coil Pike 409's. They were soooo heavy I was really upset I'd sold my lovely light 90-130mm coil U turn revelations.

the stiffness wasn't worth the extra weight at all.

Now on 454 coil Pikes. OMG, what a difference. 😀

handyman
I noticed it really made a difference, the wheel felt more like it was blatting its way along and over stuff not being deflected as much and the steering felt more accurate the bike seemed to go where i aimed for

Are you absolutely sure you felt this? I was under the impression that the great minds of singletrack had come to the unshakable conclusion that any talk of stiffness in mountain bikes was either cynical marking hoodoo or only relevant to elite level dh racers ?? 😕

Makes a bigger difference than oversize bars 🙂 I couldn't go back to 9mm QR.

I was chatting to a mtb guide in Spain last year over the course of 2 days of riding, and he was talking about QR vs bolt-through – think they may have been Minutes or similar on a Giant NRS. He reckoned that he preferred the QR forks, as they gave him more 'feel'; I forget his wording but the impression I got was that the bolt-through forks really isolated him from the bumps, and he preferred actually feeling a bit more what was going on under the wheel.
Or something 🙂

Pls excuse me, your welcome to laugh but what and where is the 20mm? Is it the diam. of the stanchions or something like that??

Its the dia of the hollow axle. It slides in from one side & threads into the fork leg on the other side. A skewer then locks it up.