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Hens teeth?
Seems the choice is either very high end or very low end Chinese eBay, with little inbetween.
Any personal recommendations for the budget end of things?
700c?
I've got a couple of Genesis ones on my Cotic X and Roadrat, combined ebay price £140.
Very happy with them, each 11oz lighter than the steel Cotic ones!
Took a while to find mind.
IIRC Cotic did offer a carbon option on the X but the previous owner of my bike was a cheapskate
26in?
I used to have Hylex one on my old SS. Really light, had it from around 2012 I think until i went 29 in 2018 and didn't die at all.
I did however break some carbon road bars made by the same manufacturer
My X came with the carbon fork. Ugly thing with canti mounts as well but they are good for a small front rack and dynamo light mounting.
Go to Aliexpress.
Yep, 700c.
Guess there's not really any difference between cheap aliexpress carbon and 2nd hand ebay - either way, there's no going back to the manufacturer if they fail.
I was going to ask about Hylex, but the breaking bars has just put me off a little!
(also, looking for a long steerer - which limits most 2nd hand forks)
I bought mine off Van Nicholas.
Above your budget though.
I was going to ask about Hylex, but the breaking bars has just put me off a little!
Combined bar/stem thingy, cracked around one of the stem bolts. Not a catastrophic failure but I stopped using them once I'd spotted it. The forks were OK though, but very regularly checked after that!
No such thing as 'budget' anymore. Brexitsh1t has seen to that👍
Try Dolan Bikes for a reasonable price. They always have stuff in the warehouse: new or seconds. You're looking at north of £100.
PlanetX as well but they have also gone the way of price rises.
Good luck with finding one for less than 300 quid. I eventually bought a genesis Cgr1 for my croix de fer as couldn’t find anything cheaper that I trusted
The Exotic carbon forks from carbonccles used to be the go to ones.
Has that changed?
I’m also interested as I may be swapping the Rebas on my Scandal for a pair if it can be cost-neutral ish
I bought a Hylix one from ebay. 1.1/8th, 12mm, flat mount, rack and guard mounts, 50mm clearance and 425g. £77.
Anything on this list from Exotic any good? I recently bought a 1 1/8th carbon fork from them for my old 26" 853 SS Inbred - it's great, and has brilliantly restored an old bike that had been sitting in the shed unused for years.
https://www.carboncycles.cc/?s=0&t=0&rb=01&
Try Planet X or maybe ragley trig from crc? Actually they might be tapered, not sure.
Spa cycles https://www.spacycles.co.uk/m21b0s0p0/Forks
St John street cycles https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/forks-carbon/
Bike Discount do a Radon own brand. We have one - initially used for CX racing and now on Mrs' commuter. Room for at least a 35mm ish tyre and mudguard - maybe a bit more. They've been selling it for a good few years so should be a safe bet.
https://www.bike-discount.de/en/radon-carbonfork-1-1/8-for-disc
I posted a photo last time this came up.
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/carbon-gravel-cx-forks-1-1-8th-found-some/
I considered that Radon fork, but it’s almost a kilogram in weight.
So lighter than a steel disc fork then....
Discs + 1 1/8" + carbon + cheap + a full set of teeth isn't going to be super light.
And (approx) 875g with a 350mm steerer is hardly "almost 1kg"
875g is 87.5% of a kilogram. 87.5% of anything is almost all of something.
I’m now on my 3rd Chinese carbon fork. My MTB fork is over 7 years old and has been raced, ragged and mistreated. It’s still fine. My Gravel fork on the Carbondale has just rolled through 10000km. The latest is only a few weeks old. All were named/known brands.
A Kinesis DC37 (I also have one of these on the Kona) will be much lighter than that Radon if you want something with EU name recognition.
From memory. My steel, Genesis CDF forks were only 1050g so not much saving in spending £170 on the Radon.
Got a Toseek Chinese carbon one from eBay a few years ago - it was a fraction of the price of the flexy Ritchey fork it replaced and absolutely no problems.
Hi Daffy - thanks for mentioning the DC37 fork - I didn't know that existed. At some point I'll drop the Radon fork out and get a true cut steerer weight.
I admire your confidence in the Hylix fork - but I work in a fatigue lab breaking things all day (not bike forks admittedly but sometimes carbon stuff) so maybe (unreasonably?) question why no mainstream manufacturers are willing to offer cheap carbon 1 1/8" disc forks at that weight. And the OP didn't seem keen on Chinese ebay.
Cheap, strong, light etc etc
Mick makes a good point. If it's possible to make safe, cheap, light carbon forks, why aren't any of the big manufacturers doing so, surely they'd clean up?
The Radon and the Evo at SJS look very similar, but clearance is limited.
Suspect the big guys don’t cater for that market as it’s so small now.
Genesis do the full carbon CGR1 in QR or 12mm which is very nice, but doubt it fits the OPs budget at £350.
The whole reason we got tapered steerers on road and gravel bikes was so they could make them 100% carbon and therefore lighter.
So really you are looking at alloy steerer forks for a straight headtube.
You'll notice it's only cheap cheap forks or very expensive forks that do all carbon straight steerers, not sure I trust the cheap ones....
I have had the genesis cdf carbon fork and now have a brother keppler fork, both are alloy steerer and fit the bill but you are looking at second hand.
Economies of scale is the only reason for the price and availability.
There are plenty of 1.1/8th carbon road forks but none of them are disc. Why? Because discs for road and gravel were barely a thing until 2013/14. By the time we started to see disc forks for road/gravel, the industry had already transitioned to 1.25 and 1.5 tapered steerers as this was happening in 2011/2012.
As such, there are almost no disc frames around that still used 1.1/8th and those that are around are usually steel bikes where saving a few grams on the fork isn’t really much of a benefit. As such there’s almost no market. So you RnD, stock, etc have to be spread across only a few sales.
Put it another way. Ritchey sell a 1.1/8th fork for ~£400 which lines up well (cost wise) with their other forks. Planet X sell a range of Selcof forks for almost half that. If there was a significant market, do you not believe that they could do a Selcof fork for £200?