I can't find it now, but George Hincapie posted a picture of his absolutely top flight BMC mountain bike some years ago - with the forks on backwards. Reverse arch Manitou's I think. He was a bloody roadie professional at the time, presumably with a fleet of mechanics at his disposal.
I’ve been that guy. Thing is, nobody ever explains that you’re supposed to go commando, it’s just seemingly expected to be obvious. Which it’s not.
There was a thread on here a while back questioning who wore jocks under their padded shorts and who didn't. I was surprised by the question as I didn't realise it was a thing, I was even more surprised by the number that did.
I've seen the backwards forks a couple of times
Def not an urban myth, I have spotted it and mentioned it to the rider a couple of times.
First time was at a 24 hour race and the rider of the bike with reversed Fox Forks said he liked it like that. When I asked him about the lowers smashing into his downtube under full compression he said he set them up extra hard to compensate. Can't cure stupid I guess.
Second time was at trail centre, new bike, it was a voodoo so from halfords. I sorted it then an there for him and he found me in the cafe later to say thanks and it felt much better.
With younger people with a shorter cycling resume, they can be keen as chips on one specific genre, but have no experience on any other
I went into a well known LBS a few years back and asked if they stocked chamois cream. The tattooed young hipster in the MTB t-shirt looked at me for a few seconds and then replied "Is this a roadie thing? Cos you'd need to ask Neil...."
I can’t find it now, but George Hincapie posted a picture of his absolutely top flight BMC mountain bike some years ago – with the forks on backwards. Reverse arch Manitou’s I think. He was a bloody roadie professional at the time, presumably with a fleet of mechanics at his disposal.
Forks!!
Nah, that's his garage door.
IIRC it'd only been thrown together out of the shipping carton that morning.
And a vast vast (vast) number of top class road (and MTB) professionals, of both sexes, shouldn't be allowed to have tools of any description in the vicinity of a bike.
Spotted at Llandegla a couple of years ago:
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I've seen quite a few kids bikes with the forks on backwards riding along the local canal path. I sometimes tell the parent and offer to turn the forks for them. Usually get the "that's how it came" reply but most are happy for me to put it right.
And a vast vast (vast) number of top class road (and MTB) professionals, of both sexes, shouldn’t be allowed to have tools of any description in the vicinity of a bike.
You see examples of this in pretty much any race where a rider has a mechanical and then watch the utterly hamfisted way they go about attempting to fix it.
The classic, especially in road, is standing on the left of the bike then bending double over it and attempting to sort a derailed chain. What are you DOING?!
@Crazylegs - that’s a high pivot hardtail, the front mech is meant to be like that. Didn’t you know that high pivot bikes are all the rage at the moment?
I used to work for Halfords, around the time they were rolling out the BikeHut branding. Even though the company had put me and a few others through a full Cytech (or whatever they were called back then) course they insisted upon sending us all on another course 'to make sure we were all on the same page' which involved a demo of how to PDI the more expensive bikes that were being brought into the ranges available to us. The guy went through his speel and informed us that there would be one mistake he would deliberately make that we had to spot. We got to the end and all of us said in unison 'forks are backwards' only for him to say No, it was that he hadn't set the limit screws on the rear mech. The look on his face when he turned back round to the bike and suddenly realized he had indeed fitted the forks backwards was priceless. Then he showed us pictures of the last two other presentations he had done and those bikes were the same!
There were also countless times, especially around Christmas when build slots were in short supply, that customers would take the bikes boxed and build them themselves. Some of the howlers were very funny but very dangerous, like thinking that tightening the top cap was enough to secure the bars to the forks. This one I sort of understood as A-Head sets were new at that point so lots of people had only ever known the old quill setup. Pedals in the wrong crank arms was another, sometimes fully wound in and actually solid enough to pedal for a bit.
Safe to say if I ever have to buy a bike from Halfords I take it boxed and build it myself!
I’ve been that guy. Thing is, nobody ever explains that you’re supposed to go commando, it’s just seemingly expected to be obvious. Which it’s not
To be fair when i was a teenager and i was "chamois-curious" I do recall being very unsure about how to wear them.
