hello again you helpful lot. after deciding to stick with the bruiser (genesis vagabond) I’m on a bit of a weight shedding mission.

only carbon forks i can find that are suitable are the exotic ones that look like the stanchions from a set of suspension forks or chinese versions from ebay.

can anyone recommend any alternatives or shed some light on the two I’ve managed to find?

criteria is 1 1/8 steerer, qr, disc, 435mm (i think) axle to crown. able to fit a 2.1 tyre.

many thanks!

Pace RC31 (which is what the exotic and chinese ones copied).

The only other thing to check is the offset, dunno what the vagabond is designed around but ~435mm rigid forks are likely to be ones intended to suspension correct 80mm travel 26″ bikes.

It’s unlikely to make the bike completely unrideable but a different offset will affect steering feel and the bikes stability.

All that having been said, you won’t save a massive amount with that sort of fork, they mostly weigh 750-850g, if you could find a monocoque fork the correct length and clearance then it would be substantially lighter.

Hi,

1st thing to do is weigh your current forks and see if they are heavy. What will you save. Then find out the measurements.

If these are genuine then they look good

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F273242912398

OK, not carbon but 830g so not heavy either. I’d rather have solid alloy forks than cheap unknown carbon. Otherwise try and pick some genesis tarn carbon forks up 2nd hand. They go for between 100 and 150 2nd hand depending on condition but they are a 120 suspension correct fork. I’m guessing the vagabond would be 80 to 100.

Check the German sites, bikediscount.de in particular, they always seem to have a good range of carbon forks (the ones you want might be under the ‘trekking’ category)

A number of the Genesis ‘adventure’ bikes are supplied with carbon forks; it might be worth contacting Genesis to see if they’re available as seperates and whether they’d work with the Vagabond.

I’m guessing the vagabond would be 80 to 100.

They’re zero corrected (with 29″ wheels), 420 was the old length for 26″ rigid bikes, 440 was for 60-80mm corrected 26″ bikes. Hence my comment about fork offset, 26″ forks had an offset of ~40mm, the vagabond has an offset of 55mm, that will have a significant effect on the bikes handling.

In general shortening the offset makes the bike feel twitchy in a straight line, but stable in corners as the self centering effect increases (and on a drop bar’d bike increases the chance of toe overlap).

Thanks guys some very valid points there .

I certainly want carbon as opposed to alloy, the reason I chose the steel bike is for comfort. Had alloy bikes & forks before and hated the road buzz if you can call it that .

I’ve emailed genesis weeks ago w no reply, will chase them up. But dont a lot of their bikes now come with tapered steerers?