150mm fork on a Chameleon, will I die?

So, I may have given in and bought one of the rather cheap fox 36 forks from CRC with the long term aim of sticking it on the front of a new full suspension build. While I’m waiting to find a frame/money for the build I was wondering about the sensibility of putting it on my 29er chameleon, in place of the 130mm fork that I’ve been using since I built it.

Has anyone tried this? Santa Cruz recommend a maximum of 140mm for travel to maintain handling but will things really get too silly, and try and kill me, with a 150mm fork on there?

I could always try and find a new air shaft for the fork in the short term but part of me really just wants to put the new shiny thing on my bike and go for a ride to see what happens.

I say give it a shot. You are only 10mm over the max recommended so give it a try.

Go for it and give us some feedback, shich fork did you get, I picked up the fox 36 performance 140mm 29er for £355 (£10 off code) and I plan to replace the 130mm rhythm fork on chameleon too

I’m still a little undecided it.ll add 150-200 grams to the front end, it’s the same GRIP dampener that the current rhythm fork has which is lively and I’ve been impressed by it, never feeling I need more stiffness or travel, but I’ve always fancied trying a 36

Pros: looks better, black stanchions, 10mm extra suspension, stiffer legs
Cons: heavier, same dampener , £355 (but sell old fork for circa £200)

I notice CRC/wiggle have been all over on the price, so I’m checking prices daily on other forks

I ended up with the performance elite one with the FIT4 damper as I was too slow to get one of the 140mm performance models.

I guess I’ll just have to give it a try and see what happens. If you don’t hear anything back it may be best to assume that it is indeed a bad idea.

I used 150mm forks on a couple of Cotic souls, despite everyone including Cotic saying not to.

It was ace.

No. You won’t die.
Use a 150 mm Fox Fit 4 on the Bossnut V2. Original fork was 130mm.

But had to move the saddle 15 mm more to the front, use now a 60 mm stem instead of the 45 mm stem and leave the spacers “under the stem” out (Calibre bikes put 2 spacers there).

Well balanced bike again. Great fun.
short stem / longer stem: normally try to use short stems. Like the steering feel of it. But had no chance to put enough weight onto the fork with the standard 45 stem.

Chameleon, hardtail: balance not soooo critical. More weight on the back wheel won’t make a shock running into the limits (as my Bossnut V2 did in the beginning with the 150 mm fork).

Well, turns out I’m going to have to wait to try this out as I rather foolishly forgot to order a new star nut when got the forks. Doh!

I’ll have to see if I can pick one up on my way out to the shops later to have a chance of sorting it for a ride tomorrow instead.

What’s nice of course with overforking:

You are able to run with lots and lots of sag.
There is some minimum pressure for the fork – means you need to have enough load/weight onto the front to really get it work.

Have fun!

So, after a couple of false starts (who knew you could buy star nuts for one inch steerer tubes off the shelf in Halfords?) I finally managed to get the forks on the bike and head out for a couple of hours yesterday.

The two main things that I learnt were that the recommended air pressures on the back of the fork are too high for me and my local riding, or my shock pump gauge is a fair bit off. The second is that when you are “testing” a new fork on a hardtail you should remember that your back wheel might not be too happy about it.

In the end I don’t think I actually managed to use any more than 130mm travel according to the o-ring marker on the forks so their ride actually felt fimer than I was used to on my old forks. I think I may have been running the old forks a little soft, and bottoming our more often than I should, which exaggerates thesis change in feeling. This also meant that the front of the bike did feel a bit higher than normal (despite me loosing about 10mm of spacers from under my stem) and was probably slackening out the head angle more than I would have had if I’d gotten the new fork set up properly.

Given all the above, I can say that with the new fork the bike definitely felt more alive when I was out of the saddle, in a weight forward attacking position, but it wasn’t really any better when seated or for climbing.

I think that at this point I probably need to spend some more time fettling things before I can say which I prefer to ride with but if I had to pick now I may currently be leaning towards preferring the shorter fork. This may be biased by the fact that my local trails (Thetford, booo) are a little on the flat side.

interesting update.

Maybe try a bit longer stem (15 mm or so longer than the current one) and try to shift the saddle very to the front.

Sounds like there is not enough load on the fork when biking in seated position.

The two main things that I learnt were that the recommended air pressures on the back of the fork are too high for me and my local riding, or my shock pump gauge is a fair bit off.

Your gauge might be correct. But geo changed with the longer fork and there is currently not enough weight on the front?

Good point about the relative waiting of the fork between the two setups.

I might try using the adjusters on the rear drop outs to lengthen the chainstays to compensate for a first try as the only spare stems I have lying about are for different bar sizes.

I’m doing the same with my Segment so interested in this thread. Had 140mm Pikes in the past which were fine so 10mm shouldn’t be an issue. Same plan, run them nice and soft. I actually had some of the 140mm 36’s but sent them back for the cheaper Fit4’s.

Well I’ve now got a very cheap (£13) 50mm stem on order from China. Should give me plenty of time to experiment with other things before it turns up, then I can try that swap after getting everything else set up as well as I can manage.

Great plan!
That’s fun.

Had no issues on my hardtail when going from 100mm to 130mm travel.
But my Bossnut V2 felt very wrong (shock always on the limit even when using max allowed pressure) when going from 130mm to 150mm fork.
Now – after adjusting such stuff: what a great bike!

So, I’ve pushed the adjustable dropouts back to their farthest setting now (previously chainstay length was 415mm, now should closer to 430mm) and left the fork as it was at the end of the last ride (less pressure than recommended by fox for my weight by about 10%, compression damping set fully open).

The bike feels much more balanced on the flats now, probably not much between the current setup and how it felt with the (much softer) 130mm forks and short chainstays. So I think I’ll stick with this for a while until I have the fork setup sorted for me and my riding.

On that front I’m still not getting more than 130mm travel out of the fork. My current plan is to just keep dropping the pressure until I get to the point of using full travel at least once per ride. If anyone can offer any advice on what else I may be able to look at I’d be happy to give it a try.

If anyone can tell me if it is good/normal for there to be a fairly large amount of grease at the bottom of the air chamber that would be rather helpful. I may otherwise start thinking about taking the forks apart for a service sooner rather than later.

If anyone can tell me if it is good/normal for there to be a fairly large amount of grease at the bottom of the air chamber

not sure how to understand this.
You mean there is grease at the lower leg somewhere?
From assembly maybe?
The fork is new – or?
There shouldn’t be any grease. I would wipe it off and re-check after the next ride.

Bit grease on the stanchions: would be fine. The upper seals are assembled with some grease.

The grease is inside of the air chamber of the fork, so you can only see it when you take the top cap off the air spring (which I did when they arrived to see how many volume spacers were in there).

It was all at the bottom of the air chamber on top of the thing labelled transfer port in the image below (assuming I can actually get an image to work)

O.k..
Inside of the fork….
There should be grease. My Fox forks have lots of grease there as well. It’s PM600 military grease or similar. No issue.

On that front I’m still not getting more than 130mm travel out of the fork. My current plan is to just keep dropping the pressure until I get to the point of using full travel at least once per ride

sounds like a plan. I pick the roughest trail for that – including some jumps and leave around one inch of “safety”. But there is some minimum air pressure necessary in the fork. You will find out.
All sounds fine!
Have fun!

I finally rode the new fox36 fit4 140mm on my 29er chameleon felt great, I’d always liked my 130mm rhythm fork grip.

I probably need to configure rebound and pressure as I’m using 120mm of travel at most
But it feels solid and front end does feel light, So light I managed to pull a manual for 10 metres on my last jump and got a little muddy

Mine are still in there and haven’t caused me any damage yet. Don’t think I’ll be taking them off unless I get a new frame to stick them on.

I did find one thing that was contributing to me not hitting full travel with these; turns out the lower legs had become fairly well pressurised and were acting as an extra spring. Using a zip tie, poked down through the fork seals, to burp them means I’m now getting much closer to the claimed travel (though, annoyingly, still not all of it).