[Closed] Who runs their Soul with a 100mm fork?

I run Rebas on my Soda, 100mm travel. Nice and fast handling, although I prefer longer travel for the likes of the Peaks.

Magura Menja 130. Used to have the same fork at 100 and prefer it at 130. It used to be a bit twichy crossing ditches etc.

But Maguras are short for their length, if you know what I mean.

I run 100mm Reba's, but I'm running a small frame that has a slighter shorter wheelbase. At 120mm the soul feels a bit high and light at the front on steep climbs. I believe Cy always used a 100mm fork on the old style frame, but I don't know what he prefers now.

[url] http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/who-has-a-soul-and-what-do-you-do-with-it [/url]

I've got 100mm Floats on mine at the moment and they seem to work well enough. I've had my bike for a few years and so far it's had:
- MX Comp ETA 105mm
- Vanilla 125R
- Float R100RLC
- Talas 80-125RLC

All were pretty good and it's back to the Floats now as the Talas have been moved to an Enduro frame. On reflection however I did like it with the Vanilla 125's and might well go back to something like that.

I've got a simple (same geo I believe) and run it with 100mm durins. I've experienced no twitchy-ness at all. In fact it handles better than any bike I've ridden before. I just feel 130mm forks make the front end too high.

120 here with the sag feels fine, guess it depends on the riding. i did run 130s which were fun down but id wind the u turn to 100 for better handling on the long steep ups.

i run 100mm maguras on mine, and before that 100mm rebas

it feels great, fast turning etc - not "twitchy" unless you spend all your time riding slack angled bikes

I expect you will love it coming off a bike that already uses 100mm forks

If you're looking at a frame swap, it'll be great with 100mm forks. That was my choice for years whilst I was mainly riding singletrack in the woods. Due to testing new frames and living in the Peaks forks have grown to 130mm, but I run a much lower bar/stem set up now to keep the bars in about the same place as with the shorter fork. This helps loads in keeping the bike nicely weighted.

yeah 100mm all the time just feels nice planted, i have rev 85-130 uturns never use the adjuster...but i am odd as i also run a 110 stem and am forever being told im doing it all wrong and should have a 100mm at the most....not sure why like

Yup. Lovely and nimble, and way more balanced and stable than I'd anticipated, having run 130mm on the Soul I had several years ago.

[img] [/img]

And 1x9 at the moment; great for local rides - bit thinking about putting a granny and front mech on again for longer rides elsewhere.

I run 120 Rebas on mine with no spacers and a 0deg stem, looking at the number of spacers/ stems some folk are running with 100mm forks, I'm not sure there could be any noticeable difference in bar height.

When i had a Soul i used to run 100m and thought that was the optimum travel on the front.It was a large so the extra frame size gave the bike a lot of stability.Always thought longer forks turned the bike into a bit of a gate.

Thank you for all of the responses.

Hope to order on ASAP.....in black 😉

Thanks again.

Mark

running 100mm rigid at the mo' due to sh1tty weather, but used to run u-turn revs. 100mm feels fine, although i feel sorry for the bike knowing that it is capable and wanting to do more with bigger forks...

i think ideally i'd run 120mm bolt thru' rebas

I'm running 100mm Menjas. using it as XC race bike so built up lightish. Love the handling-nippy but not too twitcy for my liking.

I've just asked the lbs to give me a price for some 120mm floats and now I'm wondering if its the right thing. surely the geometry is still pretty good with 120 mm - its built to go all the way to 140mm although there is a bit of a consensus that 140 mm would be a bit sloppy (WMB review etc).

Tried one for a while with Pikes. At 100mm it was nice, only got bit twitchy when it got really steep. At 100mm it climbed brillianlty. At 140mm was just silly. 120mm was spot on. I reckon a 120mm bolt-thru Reba would be spot on.

120 reba team maxles here, rides very well. climbs fine.

@hh45 - Just because the [i]can[/i] take 140mm forks, doesn't mean you [i]have[/i] to use 140mm forks. It's all about where you're riding, and your preferences. 140mm forks do feel a little floppy in fast singletrack, but when you're out blasting rocks most of the time it's completely mint. The inverse is true of 100mm forks. 120mm is a nice compromise, and F120's are a very nice fork. Make sure you get the QR15 one and it'll be sweet.

The key thing with all these differences in fork length is that you have to think about adjusting your contacts points on the bike to compensate for the geometry changes. If you go from 100mm forks to 140mm and don't change anything, you'll be way too far back on the bike to make it climb. But, shove your saddle forward 10mm, roll the bars forward back to where they were with the shorter forks, and maybe drop the stem 10mm (if there's room), and you'll be back in a similar position on the bike to the shorter forks and it'll all work a lot better. Going the other way, dropping the travel when you've set the bike up nicely for longer forks will mean you'll have very low bars and loads of weight on your wrists, which is less than ideal too.

Obviously adjustable forks mean you need to run your setup good for your most used fork length, but when switching between fixed length forks, this is well worth thinking about.

Got my soul set up with 130 revelations packed down to 115, and it feels great.

Thanks for that tidbit Cy - it helps to see it put so clearly. I'm running 120 Magura, and I'm off to the garage to move my saddle now. The winter mud has made any edge I can get in the climbing realm worth exploring.

@slugfarm - well worth the effort doing some fiddling. In my brief experience on Durin120's I found them quite long for their travel, so some saddle shuffling will help enormously I would think.