150mm forks on a Fuel EX?

Hi All,

I’m about to upgrade my current forks on the Trek Fuel I have. It’s an 08 version so comes with 130mm Fox RL QR. Head angle is 69 degrees BTW.

I’d like to swap to Rock-Shox Revelations, 150mm, Maxle and Blackbox.

Warranty is not an issue as it’s second hand but I want to know that it’ll be OK for the front, stress wise…

I’m hoping that I’m going to get the answer I want as my aim is to stop the dive when braking hard, this seems the answer to my woe.

Any opinions will be greatly appreciated from the STW crew, you’re a knowledgeable lot – for sure.

Cheers, Rob

Increasing the travel to 150mm is going to ruin the balance of your bike.

The correct solution is the correct forks for your bike. Luckily, you can spacer those revs down to 130mm just a treat. Then get them properly set up for you and they will be lovely.

See the “how do I stop the flappy stearing on my mega?” thread. It’ll handle like a bastard.

…I’m hoping that I’m going to get the answer I want as my aim is to stop the dive when braking hard, this seems the answer to my woe…

you’ll end up with 150mm of brake-dive, instead of 130mm.

‘low-speed compression damping’ is part of the answer to your woe…

Why don’t you look at a travel adjust fork so you have the 150mm for the big stuff and a more manageable 120mm for everything else. It’s what I plan on doing to my Fuel Ex.

‘low-speed compression damping’ is part of the answer to your woe…

This is the correct answer to the brake dive though.

Try to get a U-Turn Rev with the maxle and blackbox, then you can play about with the travel from 120mm to 150mm and see for yourself.

The improved damping might solve the diving issue anyway. More travel in itself won’t.

I replaced the 130 Recon Airs on my EX with 90-140 Maxle air Pikes and it transformed the bike into something a lot more stable and faster on the technical downhills* 8)

It still climbs pretty decently as well 🙂

I had to fit a longer stem (70mm I think) as I felt my torso was too far over the front after fitting the Pikes. (I’d fitted a 50mm stem when I first got the bike as the specced 90mm stem was far too long).

As for fork dive when braking hard?? Dunno what it is but I probably would if it happened.

HTH.

Before….

After….

*(mega skills compensator 😉 )

Why would you want a travel adjustable fork? That’d only mean you’d be paying more money to have the wrong fork Axle to Crown length no matter if it were extended or not?

Get something like a Talas (with adjustable travel) although i wouldn’t go over 140mm as thats what i have and i think anymore and it would ruin the bike. The adjustable travel helps a lot for when going uphill, then set it to 140mm for the downhill and its takes in the technical stuff.

I think trek had a few fuels using the talas system but from 90-130mm..

If you compared axle to crown lengths, you might be able to get a 150mm fork but not affect the axle to crown by the whole 20mm increase.

Rocksox axle to crowns are quite long for the stated travel, with recent Marzocchi’s and Fox coming in at less.

People have no issue sticking 160mm forks on 140mm frames, so why is this any different?

But as per previous posts, more travel is not definitely not the answer to brake dive.

An oil change to a thicker oil would help if you don’t have adjustable compression damping on your fork.

I don’t think 20mm will ruin the bike. I tried my 07 ex 8 with 170mm/150mm Marzocchi fork, but only a couple of rides while waiting for a new frame. It felt ok to me. perhaps obviously, 170mm was too much on anything apart from the downhill, but I liked 170mm downhill. General riding 150mm was fine, to my palate at least. I guess it depends what characteristics are important to you. Pros and cons to everything.

Thank you all – the reason I want these forks (Blackbox) is because they’ve got low speed compression, to stop dive. I’m more worried about the stress on the frame to be fair…

like i said, jumping from 130mm to 150mm – will the frame go snap?

Any ideas?

I ran mine with 120-150 rev u-turn. Plenty of highland Munro descents and no fear about the head tube seemed pretty overbuilt in that area IMO.
Dropping to 120 for climbing was a must tho handled bad in climbs at 150.

ahwiles – Member

…I’m hoping that I’m going to get the answer I want as my aim is to stop the dive when braking hard, this seems the answer to my woe…

you’ll end up with 150mm of brake-dive, instead of 130mm.

‘low-speed compression damping’ is part of the answer to your woe…

Posted 7 hours ago #Report-Post

This is exactly what I mean, i want the new fork for the low speed my Fox doesn’t offer. Cheers.

The only issue is that it may stress the frame? Thanks to bri72 for your answer!

One thing I should of mentioned in my post above was that I had to fit a longer front brake hose to the bike as it was a fraction too short after installing the longer forks and no-one wants to celebrate a tricky, hard landing with a Dot 4 champagne shower caused by the rebound snapping the hose 😐

I’ve had a set of 15omm Sektors, a basic version of the Revs, on the front of my ’08 EX for a year, it descends a bit better, but I’d be inclined to drop the stem a little if you can to help with the fraction more wandering on the climbs.

cheers slugwash 😉

Hi all,

Well, the new forks are now ordered (Rev Blackbox 150mm bolt thru) and I’ll be fitting and enjoying the lack of brake dive hopefully.

Can anyone tell me that Rev’s feel better than Fox RL’s please? 😉

Try putting your weight through your feet when you brake, cheap too!

Like light over rocks, heavy for the brake? Is this what you mean mate?

Something like heels down, legs proper bent and you should be able to brake very hard without too much weight going through your arms and maintaining more control. So thay say on interwebs.

Or

Just fit massive forks. I have a 100mm stumpjumper that I put a 130mm fork on and it is ace fun but it is more stress on the lower back when climbing. You will be raising the BB height a little which you may or may not notice. This actually helped on my Stumpy as it was very low to begin with.