[Closed] 130mm fork hardtails..question questions?

Why is your question just directed at hardtails? Why not full suss bikes with similar travel?

Try taking a poor line with a 130mm hardtail. You will still pay for it.

Why is your question just directed at hardtails? Why not full suss bikes with similar travel?

Try taking a poor line with a 130mm hardtail. You will still pay for it.

exactly...So what's the point... I just don't like the pitch and roll and then the kick up the arse... oh and because that's what I'm talking about??? hardtails... 😀

Fullsuss has similar questions... yours just as valid as any! but I have the answer thanks 😉 I don't need more than 100mmm front and back for them either for my uk riding....but of course you would need more for Alps and similar...for the sit back and enjoy the ride crew... or the beyond the "realms of comprehension of their ability" riders.

But keeping to the subject... 🙄

Ive got a 100mm travel full bouncer, and yep it does everything it should, but im currently building (nearly finished!!) a 140mm Travel hardtail, as my trail bike the reason for this is some of the new features at Trail centers are bigger than my 100mm can take and i often bottom out (did you see my pic thread??).

I also ride cannock alot and have enjoyed the DH stuff over at stile cop, while the new bike wont be a DH monster but will allow me to enjoy the DH that bit more than my current bike.

So i will have the best of both worlds, my trail bike for blasting DH and other stuff and my full bouncer for the natural stuff, hope that makes some sense?

its not just the fork length that changes, its the whole geometry and setup of the bike. they need riding differently too, its more work, but i think more fun hence i've been riding them for the last 10 years. To make the most of it i reckon you need big tyres, around 2.3, which helps take some of the sting out of the back.

theres more choice of bikes than ever. if everyone liked the same stuff there wouldn't be. no-ones being herded.

how many frames with a slack head angle, decent strenght and weight, which are big enough to be used for xc that are designed for 80 or 100 mm forks?

Plus 130mm takes the sting out of the bumps just that bit better...

I ride a 130mm forked HT (Pace 303), and thinking i was missing something, i bought a Blur Classic 100mm full suss, and it was lovely. Lots more comfortable sat down, and very flickable and poppable (not sure if thats even a word), but.....riding it back to back, i found it couldnt do anything better than my Pace, but carried a little more weight.
For my enjoyment (im not talking performance here, i ride for enjoyment), the Pace is the better bike, i enjoy the ride and the feedback more, the angles are slacker, and i can do more with it, and when the going gets rough, who's sat down anyway? 😉

I just built a prince albert 853 and stuck a par of u turn revs on it. It is a far better ride than an on-one I had for the descents. You take a similar line but at speed it much more controllable and can be ridden faster on rough ground. So it makes sense to me.

I've got a 130mm hardtail and whilst it is very nice and comfy to ride it does have far too much travel and I've absolutely no need for it all.

Kev

I've got a 130mm hardtail and whilst it is very nice and comfy to ride it does have far too much travel and I've absolutely no need for it all.

Why not swap for a 4" ht and save some weight then Kev?

I don't need more than 100mmm front and back for them either for my uk riding....but of course you would need more for Alps

DeVs ... am with you brother. More travel definitely helps where there's mountains.

Anyway ... I thought 130mm on a HT was now the norm rather than the exception??

Right...just got back... had me shower and eaten... good ride...bit hot.... Sun is shining though 😀

Some great responses... lots to think about

I have a a few riders local that run hardtails with a fork set at 80mm/100mm which they use as it fits the geometry of the frame.. but they use a fork which they can wind it out or adjust on the fly to 130mm for downhill, slackens the head angle, raises the bb, lengthens the wheel base when it's needed...That's instead of running a bike running 130 as standard for it's geometry and winding it down for climbing. They all so use lock out a lot. This seems to suit long day classic rides given the option for adapting for downhill sections...

I just get the feeling 130+mm rolls your weight forward affecting you control and steepens the head angle too much... don't even get in to the fork compressing under hard braking 🙄

I own a whyte e120 in my bike stable.... tried it... and feel I don't need 5 inches for cross country and the bike is too short a wheel base of for the right frame size with that amount of travel.... the turning circle is fantastic... but the rock and roll affect on such a short bike is not working for me 🙁

the rumours of an e140 are about... 😯 i just hope they re think it abit.... 42.67" wheelbase on the e120 medium for trail centre use is short with 5" of travel front and back...
The bike I seem to ride the most is hard tail with 80mm travel cross country stylee....old school I know...but it works great.

I think I need to get back to owning one bike or maybe....er 5 bikes 😆

the answer is most sheep can't manual or pump trails and their jumping is poor and uncontrolled.

So as a general rule if you have a bike with 130mm on the front, should it all be used for single track downhill?

Will the rider ( me ) make easier work with the full travel?

PS I very much have 'L' plates for this mtb'ing malarkey

I have U-turn Pikes on the front of my hadtail but they are always at 95mm, I mainly ride DH trails and like jumping so when I ride XC/trailcentres tend to jump everything and take DH race type lines too rather than the well worn sheep lines. pretty sure I'd ride the same speed whether I had 140mm or 100mm but the bike is more stable/predictable and handles much better (ie. better turning, pop and pumping ability) with 95.
130mm+ hardtail riders I see mainly fall into 2 category's.. newbie kids with oversprung forks or arse on saddle types on big frames.
most of the chat on here about head angles and BB heights is re-gurgetated ill-informed pish.

GW... I agree. Wise words... Like your style 😀

I run 130mm travel forks on my hardtail which I find ok for general trail riding and downhill. I'd probably run them a bit shorter but they dont have travel adjust unfortunately. I think around 120mm would be sweet.

They feel ok for jumps and dont suck up the take off too much. I used to have a dmr with 100mm marzocchis which were much better for dirt jumps though, but the forks were shite for anything else.

150mm forks were great in France but I definitely wouldnt use them over here. Makes jumping and everything else much harder work and theres no need really on the terrain we have. The riding isnt intense enough to warrent them I dont think.

Knocking people who run long forks on their hardtails seems to be the in thing to do on STW at the moment. Theres plenty of hardtail downhill riders who use 140mm+ forks on their bikes to good effect.

I mainly ride DH trails and like jumping so when I ride XC/trailcentres tend to jump everything and take DH race type lines too rather than the well worn sheep lines

Gosh. You sound like you're a very, very good rider indeed.

I couldn't be bothered reading what everyone else said, so here's my stance on it.

I had a 100mm hardtail for racing. It was good for most XC trails. Now I have a 100mm bouncer. It's good, I ride it around my local stuff all winter. But it's a very light and steep XC race frame, and not ideal for most of my day to day riding.

My 140mm forked hardtail is, in essence, a full sus replacement. I don't want to spend money on shocks, bushings and pivots. I bought a burly frame because I want to ride DH tracks on it, freeride parks, dirt jumps as well as ride all day XC rides. I didn't want it to break on any of that, so I got a tough-as-old-boots frame.

This is designed around a 130-150mm fork. So that's what I put on there. For most of my local trails 100mm is enough, so I do sometimes run it that low, but when I go to Laggan or similar (which is very regularly) I like being high up (I don't get this "low front end" business that's going around on DH/FR bikes) to get a position I like over the techie bits, so I almost always run it at full travel. I also ride in the Peak and Lake district a lot and like to have a fair whack of travel to soak up the rocks. As for out back, your legs are better at suspension than your arms so it just soaks everything up fine.

I'm just about as fast on the hardtail as I was on my old full bouncer, but don't have to worry about maintenance. It's great. I could well do a lot of the freeride stuff with 100mm- big drops and things don't take much travel- but for the techie DH tracks (like Dunkeld) and XC trails I like having more give.

The trick is to nose-wheelie through the rough stuff

Johnners- don't mess with GW. He will pour scorn on your inferior trail skillz because he's really Greg Minaar.

130mm isn't nearly enough, you need at least 140mm

I ride u-turn revs which go up to 130mm, but I never feel the need to go above 110. Granted, my frame was designed for 100mm but I still think it handles fine at 130 - just not quite as good at climbing.

luke why are you posting as Al?

I was faffing about and keep forgeting to change it back.

Im currently loving riding a short wheelbase 100mm hardtail that's built like a bleedin' tank.
Feels solid as hell, climbs ok, and bombs downhills.
Never miss that extra bit of travel, small steel frame, loadsa fun.
Got the original 130mm forks all serviced etc... dunno if i'll be putting them back on now!!

Johnners- don't mess with GW

As if. I'm totally in awe of him.

I had U-turn Rev's on my Handjob, it was a good laugh, but it climbed way better at around 115mm and just felt beter to ride.

So the Rev's went onto my 90 to 130mm travel FS and got replaced with Reba Races in 115mm mode, they made the biek much better, lighter front end and zippier through the single track but don't fancy black runs or rocky descents on it as much now, thats what the FS is for 😀

Depends where in the country you are,

In the Peaks I always felt underbiked on mine, realy should have bitten the bullet and bought a full suss.

Arround Reading it feels hopeless, it's just a dog to heft arround, I began to think maybe I'd lost my MOJO, but went on holliday to the Lakes and it all meade sense again 🙂

May bring it down again and flip the stem, remove some spacers and get the geometry more like an XC bike, or might just keep it for hollidays. Ironicly there seem to be loads of 6" full sussers being ridden arorund here???????????????

[i]130mm isn't nearly enough, you need at least 140mm[/i]

RUBBISH !

'160mm+ is where it's at baby'

(spoke in a Austin Powers voice for full effect)

[img] [/img]

i'm really looking forward to 'bumping' into cynic-al at one of his regular trips to laggan 😈

oh - to the OP, if you don't need 130mm, you don't need it.......some of us do 😀

You don't need to get it - the people with 130mm forks need to get it. I do and love to ride with them, to me thats all that counts - not what you lot think!

Lecht- I'm up there around once a month. I love it there, the best manmade trail in the country with Golspie. Do you know Jo Cardwell? I ride with her a lot.

Why do you need more travel for the alps? Do they have bigger rocks than in the UK?

this whole 'alps' thing gets me a bit. there are people in the alps riding around on 80/100mm HT frames, i should know, i was one of them!

you do not need to beef-up your bike/riding style to be able to get down a mountain. if you are a decent rider you'll manage.

that said I'm now riding a DB Alpine with 160mm 2-step Lyrik. i'd say more than 160mm is silly. i think 140mm is enough for 99% of what you encounter here or in the UK.

as mentioned above your legs are very effective shock absorbers, even more so when combined with a fat tyre on the rear.

my biggest complaint about having so much travel up front is that it allows me to go silly fast to the point where i begin to scare myself; partly due to the short wheelbase being not so stable at higher speeds. my Sanderson ridden at 130mm was very stable at high speed but i had to anchor on the brakes more often.

ride what you want, so long as you ride.....

Just because someone doesn't get something doesn't mean it's right or wrong. You either get it and embrace it or don't get it and move along to something that is more you.

If it feels right it is right.

I think the deal with the alps is the length- people want more comfort because the downhills are so much longer than the UK and our arms can't hack it.

what is a "poor line". Your "poor line" is probably a walk in the park to me.

You can ride anything on anybike really.. just depends how fast you want to go. just choose the bike you like and don't bitch about other peoples choices. A lot of these discussions are just people justifying their expensive purchases to themselves.

i remember that old Cove advert,

"you dont take a toothpick to a knife fight" or something like that.

well you do, if you are gonna watch and cheer
or you take a semi auto if you really have to kill everything, laughing.

ride what you want

Indeed

Lots and lots of Interesting points .... Thanks 😀

I suppose from one point of view these questions come from the fact I don't get the long travel on a hard tail for "Mountain biking" thing... I get the north sure and aggressive trail riding ... And it's my ignorance or lack of understanding that I'm questioning really... maybe I'm just looking for some education against my stuck ways? You sit thinking you know a lot for along while and then you make the big mistake of actually believing it... 😳

I do tend to believe there is a relationship between most styles of bike and use... but when I can't see a link... I ask questions so I can understand.

Maybe I should just get one and try it for a while... then again I could just stick a pair of 130mm forks on the frame I've got put a 50mm h/bar stem on ... and bang there you go....well almost! My centre of gravity would be a bit back...due to a suspect seat angle, height of bars,shortness of stem and extended front wheel base... The worst that could happen is me shifting my wait forward to gain control over the front end... a bit of understeer as they say! and a bit straight line ish maybe??

Hopefully not posting back from A n E

Zone 😀

Zone - i think you asked a very good question.

it seems that for 'just riding around' you can choose either fully rigid, or a 130mm hardtail. there doesn't seem to be much inbetween.

does anyone make a slack angled hardtail frame designed for 80-100mm forks?

the summer-season comes close i suppose... but are there others?

(mainly based on my tight-ar5edness - RS tora forks are looking cheap these days if you're happy with 100mm, it seems i need to spend at lest £800 on frame and forks if i want a head angle less than 69degrees)

Well I've got 2 "long forked hardtails" A Cotic Soda with 130mm forks on which is my XC bike, and feels pretty well balanced for nigh on anything, plus a freshly acquired Cotic BFe with 160mm Lyrics.

I'm just back from a fortnight in the Alps with the nice people at Trail Addiction. I took both my Turner RFX and the BFe. I started off riding the BFe and just never ever felt the need to swap to the Turner. The stability, precision and chuckability of a slack, short hardtail with big forks, big brakes and big tyres was pretty amazing on tight technical trails. Sure there were a few bits where I had to grit my teeth and hang on, but overall it slowed me down very little compared to the other guys in the group. The guides (on 6/7" FS bikes) could leave me on the fast stuff (30mph+), but it was evens every where else.

It's not a great climbing bike (although its surprisingly OK), partly down to no granny ring, partly down to riding a frame a size down from normal, with a 50mm stem, a 6lb fork and 2.5 tyres with DH tubes. U-turn forks go a long way to making things easier though.

Interestingly, one of the other TA guests trashed their Stumpjumper and then borrowed a Dialled Alpine from Ali. He absolutely hated it for half and hour or so, then it clicked and he was clearing sections of trail that he said he wouldn't have even attempted on his own full sus bike.

One of the guides likened big forked hardtails to shagging a fat bird "So very, very wrong, but feels so very, very right"

ahwhiles, Charge bikes' Nick Larsen is very anti- the whole 130mm fork thing, and the Blender and Duster are both designed around 100mm forks.

Personally I reckon this point of view falls flat when you consider that most DH races are won on bikes with 170-200mm travel front and rear. Even on a 130mm travel full susser the effects of braking and weight shifting are potentially going to more pronounced than on a 130mm hardtail.

I ride a Cotic Soul with a Magura Menja 130 fork. Mostly set up as singlespeed.

It all feels fine to me, and given that the 80mm and 100mm Menjas are the same fork, so when bottomed out the geometry is all the same, I can't see the disadvantage.

I never get nose lift when climbing, as I'm either standing up if singlespeeding or walking up anyway with gears. And anyway, I like an excuse to get off up hills.

The advantage it gives me over 100mm (which I used to have) is that the front used to feel a bit "tippy" when crossing ditches etc. and now it feels less so.

the Orange 5 is often held up as a good example of a 'trail' bike.

(i'm not really sure what that means either)

quoted head angle - 67degrees, which seems to be about average for a that kind of bike.

the charge duster has a quoted head angle of 71 degrees.

i don't understand why hardtail frames have such steep head angles...?

It's an XC race frame. If you want a slack head angle, a Blender is 68 degrees and I think the Summer Season is similarly slack (although didn't everyone end up running theirs with long forks regardless?)

i used to think like the op but changed my mind over the last year or so. i used to ride a ht with 65mm then went up to 80mm and got an 80mm travel anthem and they were great but after trying lots of bikes when i wanted to replace the anthem i went with a 5 spot and after riding the for a while got rid of the cannondale ht and got an inbred 456 with talas on.

sure they both weigh more than the bikes theyve replaced but they are so much more fun to ride. and the turner climbs better than the anthem too even tho it weighs more 😉

[i]i don't understand why hardtail frames have such steep head angles...? [/i]

'cause with a steeper head angle and a lower BB height you can tip it into bends and race up hills miles easier, makes for a much more nippy and agile bike.

start to slacken the angles and up the bb height and the bike doesn't handle as sharp and becomes more of a comfortable cruiser.

Kev

I had a 100mm hardtail as my second bike, and I've just upgraded it to a Marin Rocky ridge. What a blast. It's tons more fun. That bike just wants to launch off every single lip it sees. I'd never want to go back to a 100mm, unless I spent all my time on canal paths and the like. The more relaxed geometry makes me a lot more inclined to try some of the super steep trails around where I live. I would have definitely shied away from them on my old hardtail, which was more suited to pootling along (although I agree that, in theory, you oculd ride anything on a 100mm hardtail, I would never have enjoyed it so much, and woudl have been off over the bars several times a night).

So I'm afraid I couldn't disagree more with the original post.

Excuse my crude attempt at " the world as everyone should see it" list 😳

busy....but?

Full rigid = old school 😀
80mm = out and out race 😀 up to noncy dusty trail leisure rider 🙁
100mm = Cross country race and "Mountain biking" full suss cross country.. 😀
120mm = Aggressive trail,north shore, freeride (closeish), full suspension all dayer 😀
130mm = Agressive Trail, north sure, freeride (close one), full suspension freeride 😀
150mmm = Downhill trailsters FS or down hill fs 😀
170mm = Downhill, gravity drop,brain out,crazy stuff 😳 not my bag!

A bit of a vauge list so don't pay to much attention to detail... but you get my drift... Hopefully.
Droppin a hardtail in at 130mm or 150mm grates against my understanding of how bikes ride.. even a full suss at this level but with cross country geometry just does not compute 😯 so on the hardtail while the front end is soaking the size hits on big stuff being ridden ..what is the back end doing? or if it's cross country trail riding... why do you need 130mm.... Can someone draw me a diagram 😳

Maybe some things in life your just never meant to be got? 🙁

Please feel free to make your own list??? 😀

Sorry, but that last post reads like you've been locked in a cellar for a month with nothing except a flickering candle and some back issues of MBR.

Although I'll have to try blithely dropping the phrase "soaking the size hits on big stuff being ridden" into a conversation at some point. 🙂

[chuckles at Mr_A]

I rode short travel and rigid bikes for years and years. It was all good. I currently have a Pace 305 with a U-turn Pike (95-140mm) on it. I am vastly faster and have been able to master trails and lines that I simply avoided or minced before.

Generally I'll run the Pike at around 120mm so that, psychologically, I've got something in reserve for uber-sick and mega-rad sections where it is imperative that the gnarl be dialled out and the stoke be on.

YOur legs deal with the back. THey have lots of suspensions.

😆 sorry typing fast... multi taskin a bit too 😉

But MBR??????

ouch! 😥

Ah so it's my legs,head and typing that are the problem not the style of bike... 😯
😀

YOur legs deal with the back. THey have lots of suspensions

I need to let a bit of air out of my legs then and speed up the rebound in my knees 😆

Seriously though, I run 120mm travel on the front, and that can soak up more bumps than my legs can for the rear. I say that because when I hit real rocky trails fast, my feet can get a little air time off the peddals, regardless of how relaxed my legs are and it becomes and little scary. Probably just me though.

Stop trying to put everything in a box & just ride the bloody thing.

people buy in boxes real or perceived... they live in boxes real or perceived...

but which one shall I ride... which one will give the most fun and enjoyment for my hard earned cash...which will suit my riding abilities and and aspirations...

A life without choice feeds the lazy and restricts the explorer...

zone

Then choose a box. Personally, I have 5 different boxes to choose from.

maybe that's the answer, one more box not no boxes.. 😀

The answer is always "one more box":

Yep! even when your cremated 🙁

Lift Assisted Single Track: that's another box for you to put something in.

I think Mr Zone, you are giving too much thought to this. 10mm isn't a big deal and unless your a 'princess and the pea' type of rider, you'd struggle to notice the difference it makes to the whole setup of the bike. Your arms and legs have bends near the middle and should cope with any adjustments your body need to make to keep things rosey.

I carefully lived my mountain biking career backwards, started off on 4-inch full sus, graduated to a long-travel hardtail, then a shorter travel one, then I went fully rigid and finally transferred to the road.

That's a bit of a contrast to the OP, who seems to be going the other way but got stuck at stage two, but what I would say is that my way appears to have left my brain mostly undamaged, whereas riding short travel hardtails extensively has clearly scrambled yours in a quite unfortunate way, what with all these boxes you're on about.

Right now, I think your best bet is to forget about extended travel and, instead, go and see a qualified mental health professional to see if the damage is in some way reversible. I suspect he or she may suggest more travel as a longer term solution, but in the short term, maybe you just need to get out more?

Wasn't there a study a couple of years back that suggested short travel bikes, eventualy, produce a milder version of the punch drunk syndrome that affects some boxers?

I think and have thought about these sort of bike things a lot.... I have too! 😀

Nothing wrong with a bit of theory revaluation with riders that are committed ( no pun intended) to riding.

I've gone up and down.. rigid to down hill( not dh now of course) back down to 80mm hardtail on my main bike... I nearly went for some carbon rigid forks.. 😯 And as for road bikes... I'm not that nuts.... 😆

Odd thing is that this type of set up wasn't there the last time I went up the travel size ladder, or down for that matter... so feedback to my questions are very helpful and appreciated! 😀

I suppose I'm excited about how a style of bike has emerged off the trails in this modern age of big brands and big technology and managed to carve an innovative route for its self... It's fantastic. It doesn't have to be my thing to want to understand it. it's been extremely interesting, thanks.. genuinely 😀

Where will it go from here... any ideas... evolution is so thought provoking.

But yep slightley bonkers.. full shilling...? no thanks! I could never be as perfect as some on here 😆

I'm glad this has been informative for you. Now go out and hit the size soaks on ridden big stuff. 🙂

On a side note.

Please could we introduce some sort of rationing system to stop this appalling waste of emoticons? ❓ 😀 🙄

unless your a 'princess and the pea' type of rider,

New niche?