I’ve ridden a BFe and had issues with the handling with different lengths of forks. The same issues I have with my Mmmbop forks so I’ll tell you the story about it.
This was my first Mmmbop with 120-150mm U-turn Revelation Team forks (32mm legs like a Fox 32… but allegedly stiffer/better with the 20mm maxle).
With the fork at 150mm the head angle is nice and slack giving confidence for DH, but the seat angle is too slack for techy climbing and the extra bottom bracket height leads to flip/flop steering. Reducing the travel to 130mm fixed most of these issues and was how I liked the bike best… although I would have prefered a slacker head angle and a less flexy fork. The Rev’s were fine most of the time especially when the trails were dry but I ride a lot in steep, wet, and muddy trails; wrestling the Rev’s down deep rutted sludge got scary random at times. I was going to try an angle set to slacken the front a bit but after a particularly scary muddy ride I decided to ditch it completely (and I broke the U-turn on the fork).
To replace this I bought a Troof which I ran with 160mm 36 forks from my big bike – great frame but it broke 😥 . Proper slack low slung DH weapen of a hardtail… but perhaps a little too single minded for all round use.
This is Mmmbop two (smaller) with the 36 forks from the Troof reduced to 130mm of travel.
This is a great fun little bike as the 36’s give the front a directness which was missing from the Revelation forks. The reduced travel 36’s keep the geometry sweet (as designed) and really allow me to throw the front end into things without wondering where it’s going to end up. In an ideal world I would still slacken the head angle a little more but I would not do it by lengthening the fork as from my experience the handling becomes too compromised.
Summary – IMHO/IMHE… for a hard hitting hardtail it’s better to have a burly feeling fork which keeps the geometry as designed than to compromise the handling by adding a longer fork (especially if it’s a wet noodle of a fork).