Been out of the loop fora few years due to illness so am not up to speed on what’s available. Basically I used to love my simple marzocchi MX COMP with ETA. The ability to be able to instantly reduce front end height when climbing was fantastic. Don’t want to spend too much….is there anything available at the mo? Only need 80 or 100mm travel.
Thanks
Bill

If your only using 100mm forks what do you want to reduce them to??

Dropping the front end down by 8cm with the ETA made a huge difference when climbing on road sections/fireroads.It will actually be used on a rough stuff type tourer

ads678, do you know the old M-ETA system? It’s not a travel reducer, it is an rebound speed adjuster that traps the fork when compressed down to about 30mm of it’s previous length, which in turn drops the front end height and makes the bike much easier to climb steep stuff on, as the front has less tendency to lift or wander.

It was a fantastic system and one i miss too. To the OP; there are travel adjust forks that enable you to adjust travel and front end height on the fly, but only relatively small amouts, eg: 80-100-120, and nothing I’m aware of like eta. Others allow you to lock out, but usually by doing it the opposite way, putting the fork at full extension instead of full compression. Prevents bobbing, but doesn’t lower the front.

Then there are over engineered concepts like dual circuit systems where you can adjust the fore-aft pressures between front and rear shocks to make the rear harder and the front lower – not sure exactly how they do it, google Bionicon if you want.

Last point – if you’ve been away a long time, the shape of bikes in general has changed and to my opinion climb far better now than their predecessors from the time when ETA was around and useful. You might not need it…..

It worked on some bikes better than others, I found it didn’t work so well on modern frames with very steep seat angles already, it was better suited to bikes with ~71-72 seat angles and made them climb like rocket ships.

It was great at the time, but most dampers these days work on the compression damping to make the pedal rather than reducing the travel. The closest I can think of is the dual position air/2-step air fork from Rock shox, but they were only in the longer travel forks.

It’s not really necessary on modern bikes, seat angles have steepened and forks don’t bob as much which is really all ETA achieved.

I’ve actually got a set of MX-pro’s in the shed, on the one hand they’re on a bike that never get’s used and is already partly in bits, on the other hand as far as damping is concerned they blow the socks off anything modern (apart from the most expensive forks) by such a long way it’s not funny!

Fox Talas forks are adjustable travel, and plenty of Rockshox forks have travel adjust. These used to be U turn, but I think that dual position forks now offer two travel positions.

Fox Talas forks are adjustable travel, and plenty of Rockshox forks have travel adjust. These used to be U turn, but I think that dual position forks now offer two travel positions.

They do but its not a pronounced.

DTSwiss still do some launch control forks I think which is the same idea.

I was going to mention DT Swiss. The twin shot forks have the feature you’re after or at least they did around 2010-3. Superb forks as well with some decent deals about on eBay atm.

Some 2nd hand Pace forks?

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