A friend of Mrs PB and I is new to mountainbiking and has aquired an old but little used Trek 4300WSD. I have given it the once over and it seems pretty sound apart from having totally crap front forks fitted. They are Suntour with coil springs which I can only compress about an inch by really pushing them hard, they should have about 3 inches of travel. I have unscrewed the top caps and they compress right down so they aren't bent or sticking, is there any low cost way of getting these forks to actually soften up as she is complaining of sore wrists and back and it is affecting her enjoyment of riding rougher ground. I don't know why Trek do this, surely an equally cheap pair of air forks would give a wider adjustment range on what is a bike designed for women. Is the only option to buy some new forks, if so what air sprung options are there that dont cost more than the bike is worth, I guess I could persuade her to part with about £100 to make the bike easier to ride.
Assuming it's a relatively small frame I have a pair of Fox F100 RLT's with a 165mm steerer that I'd do for that and they'd be a lot better than the Suntours. email in profile.
If not - I'd keep an eye on the classifieds for old SIDS or REBA's.
Thanks for the reply, just measured the current one and it is 185mm so no good I'm afraid. Take your point about old SIDs, a pair of those would be perfect.
take a spring out(i`m presuming there's one in each leg) 🙂
I have some rock shox tora 318 100mm air (the good ones with proper motion control and alloy steerer) with a long enough steerer if your interested.
+1 for removing a spring. tried this on a suntour a few years back and was much better. try either side as some forks have damping in one side only and work better depending on which spring is removed.
Just been doing a bit of "fettling" They aren't Suntours at all 🙄 they are RST Gilas proudly emblazoned with Womens specific soft spring (my arse) took the left hand spring out which definitely softens the thing but there doesn't seem to be any damping at all, then tried taking the right spring out (i.e swapping sides) and the same thing. Is there a chance that there are no damping arrangements on this fork? I've taken it for a spin and it seems better with 1 spring in, will it be ok, I know some Marzocchis have this but I guess thats by design.