What will happen if I put G2 forks on a regular 29er frame.

Believe it or not, I’ve got worn stanchions on the Fox forks on my Lynskey 29er.
I’ve got some G2 forks off my Gary Fisher frame, the one that snapped after seven months use, so I was wondering about fitting them to the Lynskey.

What’s the difference between G2 and normal geometry ?
I think normal forks are 45mm rake and G2 is 51mm. Is that it ?

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_and_motorcycle_geometry and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_and_motorcycle_dynamics more rake will give me less trail which, as I understand it, will make the bike steer quicker and be less stable at speed.
Is that right ?
What does that mean in the real world ?

If it makes any difference, I run my forks with no sag. I know it’s wrong, but I like them that way.
This means I’ve got slightly more trail than the forks and frame are designed for anyway to start with, so will the two cancel each other out ?

If you have the forks already, why not try it and let us know?

I doubt anyone will be able to give you as good an answer as you’ll get from 15m fitting them and trying it! Go for it!

Yeah, I know it’s not a big job to swap them, I just thought I’d see if anyone else has tried it first.

I rode the Gary Fisher with normal forks until I bought the G2 forks and it was ridable, but better with the proper forks.
I’m just wondering how it will handle going the other way.

I believe ‘you’ll die’ is the common response.

The Gary Fisher website does say that fitting non-G2 forks to a G2 frame is OK, but give no clues about doing the reverse.

Out of interest, Graham, where did you get the G2 forks from?

When I bought my Gary Fisher Marlin (as a donor bike) the original G2 forks were not really up to much, so I tried to obtain some better spec ones – no dice from RockShox/Fox/Trek – and ended up buying some Manitou Tower Pros (which, it turns out, was an excellent move)

no idea about the G2s but the Jeff Jones forks on my Ti29er have 55mm offset and they really do nice things to the handling, although I also do have the A-C down at 440mm ish

This is almost certainly bound to happen:

one answer would be to swap them for some non-G2 forks with someone who has a G2 frame but not G2 forks

like me 😀

belugabob, I got them off some guy in Birmingham. I think it was via this forum, although it may have been ebay.

Anyway, I didn’t die.
They felt a bit odd at first when climbing.
I’ve got them on a single speed, so I tend to end up standing up, wrenching on the bar ends with my weight right over the front a lot.
This made the bike feel a little bit unstable. Nothing to worry about, I just needed to put a bit more thought in to steering it, although I didn’t notice it later on, so I think I must be adapting to it.
I thought it might be a bit unstable at speed, but no, there’s a high speed farm track descent on my commute and it felt fine on that.

Overall, neither better or worse, just a bit different, so sorry big-n-daft, I’ll keep them on.

I swapped some Dart forks with G2 from a GF Marlin over to a Sanderson frame, and all seems ok. Having said that I’m not the one now riding it and the family member who has got it, has not/will not, put it to much serious use.