I looked at some forks today and when measuring the silver stanchion showing it measured exactly 140mm. Does this mean the forks probably have a travel of around 130mm?

I always thought (someone told me once) it was stanchion showing minus 5-10mm.

Am I way off here?

Depends. Some will hit a bump stop at full travel before all the stanchion has sunk into the lower, some will have a portion of stanchion already in the lower thanks to air pressures. Different for different brands. What fork were you looking at?

They usually have the amount of travel + 5-10 mm spare ,
E.g 140mm normally has 145-150mm stantions.

Some cheap rockshox tora for a hack bike that are 100mm but have 140mm stanchion showing.

I’m confused with this one.

More modern longer travel forks will only have stanchion measuring only a couple of mm more than the travel they provide. The trend these days is to have as low a front end as possible especially with longer travel forks, less stanchion showing will either give more stiffness of lighter weight depending on the design. I cant see why a suspension company would make forks that are 10mm taller than they need to be when it is easy enough to reduce that excess stanchion by 7-8mm.

Are they solo airs? or U-turns?
I would have thought Toras would need some bodging to get to 140mm unless they were the Uturn versions, or indeed solos at 130mm with 10mm spare.

The solo airs could be set to 80/100/130mm IIRC.
Uturns 85mm-135mm

Coil I believe. No u turn or air valve.

Unless I can’t measure right there is definitely 140mm of stanchion showing.

Pull the coil out and see how much they compress.

I cant see why they would have 40mm extra height on them. Stick a zip tie on the stanchion and jump up and down on the bars. See how much they compress.

I was wondering the same yesterday. My fox f120 exposed stantions measure exactly 120mm.

“Does stanchion showing directly relate to travel?”

no , simple as that.

So is there a definitive way of telling or do I just take the description as being correct.

That makes it a 100mm fork with 140mm stanchion showing?

Put a zip tie around one of the stanchions and jump up and down on them. Measure how far the zip tie has moved up the leg and you will have a little bit more travel than that.

Never got a RS to touch crowns but have done on Marz (AM’s, 55’s and 888’s) and Fox 36’s. Let the air out if it has any and see how far you can push it down.