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Sooo, I bought a replacement bike from fleaBay a few months back, the idea being to have something cheap and cheerful but basically capable for a couple of years whilst I save up to buy a suitable replacement for my previous bike (stolen). I ended up a with a 20" 2007 Kona Caldera for £275.
I've replaced the seized Hayes 9 brakes with M596 Deores, the rusty old chain with a SRAM PC971 and the comically high rise stem with a secondhand 0 degree Hope from the STW classifieds. The achilles heel of the bike though is the very soft fork. It is a 105mm travel Marzocchi MZ Race, although a bit of web research revealed that it is actually a Marzocchi branded SR Suntour. With the bike being a 20", you'd expect the fork to be fairly firm, but even with the preload wound all the way in I can pretty much bottom it out when braking hard on tarmac. I'm 6 foot and weigh around 12 stone.
I ordered a stiff spring from JE James Cycles (listed on the website and on the packaging as 'Marzocchi MZ Race Hard Spring Kit'), but when it arrived today it was completely different to what came out of the fork. The kit has two 6.5" springs, but the fork has a single 9.5" spring (with an elastomer captive inside it) in one leg and a nitrogen filled damper cartridge in the other. I've rung JE James and they're sending me a returns bag, but that still leaves me with a too-soft fork. It [i]does[/i] have a lock out, which is fine for commuting, but obviously I want some form of suspension off road. Does anyone know where I can source a stiffer spring for this fork (perhaps from an actual Suntour branded fork?) or, failing that, know of anywhere/anyone selling an 80mm or 100mm travel fork with a 215mm-ish steerer tube? It'd need to be cheap though (as in [i]properly[/i] cheap!), the whole idea of this bike is to be a budget ride whilst I save for something decent.
Hmm, Rose Bikes do an RST Capa T 80 for £62 delivered. Any got any experience of this fork, good or bad? I weigh 12 stone(ish), my riding is woodsy/trail centre stuff (very XC biased, I'm not into jumps or drops) and road commuting.
Scratch my last, I've just noticed it comes without a steerer tube!!!
Well, I've just had a fairly productive 30 minutes on the phone. I first rang Greyville Enterprises, who import Suntour. They couldn't help as, although the forks are Marzocchi branded Suntours, they apparantly don't share any common internals with any Suntour fork.
Greyville gave me the number of Windwave, who import Marzocchi. The chap I spoke to went through various PDFs whilst he was talking to me and concluded that the 'MZ Race' on my bike must have been a Kona-specific OEM model, as it had a different internal spec to the retail/actual MZ Race as sold by Marzocchi. After patiently getting me to describe exactly what was inside the fork, he concluded that it was a mishmash of two other forks of the era, one of which would have had coils and elastomers in both legs and the other having a damping cartridge like mine but open bath oil damping in both legs too.
Parts for this fork simply aren't available any longer, but Mr Helpful Windwave Man gave two suggestions; one was to place some spacers (washers or coins for example) between the spring top cap and the preload adjuster, so effectively increasing the preload. Failing that, he said I could bring my bike down (by happy coincidence, Windwave are in Gosport, about 10 miles from where I work) and leave it with them, they would then take all the internals out and do some experimenting to see what they could use from a later model (but with the same 30mm stanchions) instead.
In this day and age, I was pleasantly taken aback by just how helpful Windwave were. I'd never really considered Marzocchi products before (I got this fork more by accident than design) but you know what? In the future, I think I just might.
8 pence later, and things have improved! Placing 4 x 2p pieces under the adjuster and winding the preload on full has certainly made a difference. The fork is still a lot softer than I'd like, but at least now it doesn't feel like it's going to pitch me over the bar every time I brake. In terms of 'make do for the time being', it'll do! I think what I might do though is Araldite the coins together, to form a solid block. I'm just slightly worried about the individual coins somehow parting company and dropping down into the fork leg.
sounds like a result, my thoughts on the matter are though are if you have the money to spend on a spring or even the £62 on new ones.. place a wtd ad for some 03-06 Marz MX (comp or pro) air forks.
Bombproof, not complicate the damping, maybe a little basic but it works. I have a set of 04's and another m8 has been running some for years without any servicing.. that and if you local to Windwave (again I've found them to be very helpful) they could rejuvenated back to new for not a lot of cash.
TBH, I don't really want to spend out on this bike, so not buying a fork at all is the preferred option. The idea is to keep the scheckles in the bank until there's a big enough pile for A Shiny New Bike. Even trying to keep it on a budget, I've still spent more than I intended.
[b]Bike: £275[/b] from eBay
[b]Hope skewers: £20[/b] from eBay (originals on bike were rusted to buggery)
[b]Deore disc brakes: £100[/b] new (Hayes 9s on bike were seized)
[b]SRAM chain: £20[/b] new (original on bike was a) rusted to buggery and b) horrible non-rejoinable Shimano nonsense)
[b]Hope stem: £30[/b] from STW (original on bike was a 15 degree rise, I like my bars low)
[b]EA70 bar: £27[/b] from eBay, (new stem was 31.8mm and the original bar was 25.4mm)
[b]EBC Greenstuff pads £20ish[/b] new (always used them, swear by them)
[b]Gold bottle cage bolts £5[/b] new (because I'm a tart)
So in total, my 'budget make do' already owes me nearly £500! It still needs a headset, ahead (no pun intended) of a stag-weekend trip to Coed y Brenin at the end of May. That'll be a Hope as, although they're £60, my last one was still in perfect condition after 6 or 7 years of use on the original bearings. If they last that long, I consider it a shrewd investment.