The standard Fox is 100mm. I need more. What can I go up to and what should I buy for £350?

Thanks for any help

The Anthem is a 2012.

They don’t seem to sell the 26er in Australia any more but when they did, it was available with a 120mm fork. Doesn’t guarantee it won’t mess with the UK warranty though.

No doubt people’ll tell you it’ll ruin the handling but Adam Craig didn’t think so, and he was involved in the development…

I run my 2010 anthem X1 with a 120mm reba with maxle and prefer it to the 100mm front forks. You can get them at merlin for £300 or less and £350 should get you SID 120mm. I think much more and it will start to affect the geometry and put stress on the headtube. If you want more it may be better to sell the anthem and get a longer travel frame.

For pretty much any Giant bike the Internet wisdom seems to b that it feels better with wider bars, a shorter stem and 20mm more travel. Makes you wonder why Giant waste all that money on R&D. Still it means that you are unlikely to do any damage with a 120mm fork.

When I had an Anthem I had a set of u-turn Pikes with 95-140mm travel up front and it was best downhill with 120mm, but anything remotely uphill and it needed to be wound down to 100mm to behave. It just seemed better at 100mm all the time. The trendy aim of slackening angles and big travel forks didn’t work for me.

If you really want more travel I’d go for a different frame that can make the most of it.

I run mine with a Dual Position Air Pike “frankenfork” set to switch between 100mm and 130mm.

Giant’s own race team race with 120mm forks on them.

I’ve been using my anthem x as my only bike for everything for the past year and a half. More and more its been am/dh type trails. I kept the 100mm forks but ran them quite firm with wider bars, short stem with a few spacers below to keep the front up as much as poss and ran the rear shock a little softer with more sag than normal, 30ish %. Stuck a 2.5 front tyre on too which helped through the rough stuff. Effectively the outcome of all this slackened the bike a bit but it was still a bit flighty on the steep fast stuff

Just bought a dh bike so the anthem will be going part way back to xc mode (bars and stem will def stay)

I’ve got a RS revelation 100-130 on mine. I run it fairly soft (via neg air chamber) so actually get 90-120 travel. Ultra supple, will climb a wall wound down and descends superbly on full out. Not destroyed it so far!

Thanks chaps.

I’ll be happy with a quality 120mm set.

Cheers.

I’m running mine with 120mm specialised futureshocks. Mainly bought as they were super cheap on eBay when I was building it up. But they’ve been faultless over nearly two years of abuse.

Never risen with anything else so can’t offer a comparison. But for what is worth I enjoy it, use a 2.35 front tyre most of the year. I suspect it affects it’s climbing abilities due to a higher front end.

Well, that’s the excuse I’m going to use anyway…

Doesn’t guarantee it won’t mess with the UK warranty though.

I’d always remove the parts from a snapped frame before sending away for warranty 😉