Cheap Suntour forks, how bad?

Tomd1984’s thread about the new Norco’s has peaked my interest, but my budget will only run to the Fluid 4 which comes with XCR 34s. Are they going to be as crap as I imagine? Otherwise the frame looks like a great long term proposition the geometry looks spot on for me.

Otherwise I’m looking at a hawk hill, Boardman mtr 8.8, Jamis dakar or a new Bossnut Evo. Which all have better bits hanging off them, but with slightly compromised geometry (due to my stumpy legs) or are gopping (boardman).

Any thoughts?

Had a pair on a bike we used for a charity bike ride. You know, they weren’t half bad!
Can’t comment on longevity, but they felt smooth, lockout worked fine and didn’t flex noticeably.
Get the one with the frame that you want. Forks are easy to pick up if you feel the need to upgrade down the line.

I’d have raidons. They are not a bad fork. At all. I’d take a raidon over a recon for example. But sub raidons I’d be swapping them out.

The XCR’s about the least good fork that I’d have on a bike, but mine did struggle badly with lifespan- the sealing wasn’t great and the bushings wore fast. Still, better than expected.

Defo worth buying and then upgrading in the future if you feel the need.

Dont forget clubcard, C2W and trade in. I’m using all 3 for mine!

Had some on a Specialized Rockhopper hardtail, I think they were XCRs. They weren’t that bad to be honest, but were quite heavy. I eventually replaced them for some budget Rockshox forks which weren’t massively better as suspension but which were a fair bit lighter which made a noticeable difference.

I’d have raidons. They are not a bad fork. At all. I’d take a raidon over a recon for example. But sub raidons I’d be swapping them out.

Agreed. I wouldn’t not buy the Norco simply due to the forks, but I’d factor in a fork upgrade sooner rather than later.
I really rate the Raidons I have. Preferred them over the Recons and XC32 at least.

Theres a really nice 15×110 140mm Yari in the classifieds, £275. Less whatever you get for unridden XCR…

The new ally stanchion air sprung XCR 34s are loads better than the old steel stanchion coil ones.

Yes. The cheap ones are crap.

The mid level forks from Suntour are not bad at all.

But at the same time: the very cheap forks are soooo cheap that they can’t be better…

The cheap and mid-range suntours use grease on the stanchions instead of oil in the lowers – they are vastly improved by converting to oil. Can’t really comment on the XCR 34.

I ran pair of raidons into the ground over 3 years – the bushings eventually wore out so they rattled, and being a budget fork it just wasn’t worth replacing them – probably would need to replace the lowers – not many spares seem to be available at this level of fork.

On that note I also had to replace a seized damper, which I had to import, so on reflection not an economical repair really..

Slightly more positive than I’d have thought then. I’ll go and have a chat to the Evans bods tomorrow.

I need to see if I can ymuse BC discount onbiks though, it’s not clear online. If I can’t then it’s back to the drawing board. If I can I might try and sneak up to the FS3 to get a full RS set of boingy bits.

Get a secondhand bike instead!

And yes, those Boardmans are really, really gopping.

I think you’ll be paying for the RS badge on the more expensive bike rather than any actual improvements and the RS forks are only 32mm stanchions so there’s possibly a trade off for ‘better’ geary bits from SRAM. The RRP’s about the same for both forks so it’s likely the Suntours’d be the better/stiffer/stronger fork if you can get yourself past the badge.

To be clear, OP is looking at these ones. Air sprung, remote lockout and some real damping options.

Not to be confused with the ‘spring in a tube, steel stanchions, plastic bushes and no adjustment’ cheapo models.

Also, the fluid fs 3 has a pair of Recon slivers. Not sure that that is an actual upgrade, other than badge.

Recon Silver is pretty crap IME.

To be clear, OP is looking at these ones. Air sprung, remote lockout and some real damping options.

My kids bikes – Whyte 403 – has those and I was actually surprised how good they appear to be. Only 2 rides in though.

I’d also have tbe suntour over the Recon silver.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the good stuff is really good but “urgh- Suntour forks! They don’t match my car/van/dog/handbag… What will people I don’t know think of me?”

I have some Epicons, now on the pub bike. They wern’t all that bad. The daft thing about them is that they didn’t have any of the foam washers behind the wiper seals. That was well documented at the time, so I dropped the lowers off and fitted some foam washers, soaking them in oil first. Also added some oil into the stansions while I was at it. They ran really smooth. I eventualy swapped them out for some RS Revs which were on offer at Alltricks. To be honest, apart from the Revs being 200g lighter, I couldn’t tell the difference.

The nearest RS fork to that spec RS Rev

I had some raidons before I on my bizango, they were patchy at best, the recons and sektors I’ve had have been much better. That’s what puts me off the xcr34s. I’ll go and have a look at them, tbh I’d prefer deore over nx not sure why, I’m just a Shimano guy, I do shift with my index finger sometimes.

The new Xcr air forks look to be a trickle down tech from the older Raidon but with thicker stantions. They always used to be the spring in a tube style fork typical of the XC× range.

Think suntour still have a bit of a bad rep because they kinda saturated the low end fork market with the XCT, XCM and XCR coil forks.

FWIW I changed my forks from XCM to epixon (which replaced epicon due to a copyright name issue) which is the next model up from Raidon… The difference is very big.

At the time I was looking at rebas (or recons I forgot, TK gold air forks) but after some advice on here, might have actually been Kayla1 actually lol! I asked my LBS and they concurred that for the marginal increase in price, the epixons were the better fork. So that’s what I went with.

I’m very happy with them, but i don’t really have any other forks to draw a comparison with. So anecdotal but I will echo the above and, suntour make complete shyite for the budjet OEM mass producers right up to pro stuff, much like any other mainstream manufacturers, to wright it off because it’s not Fox or RS is a bit premature, low end RS forks are a bit shit too.

Bit of a minefield as specs can change year on year, especially with OEM stuff, but personally I’m happy with my forks and don’t really care for what badge is on them.

epixon (which replaced epicon due to a copyright name issue)

Thanks for explaining that, I always assumed one of those names was a typo when I see them discussed online!

My Girlfriend’s Voodoo has XCR air forks and they aren’t bad at all. Much much better than the coil ones.

Evans are getting me a large in to have a go on. Should be here in a fortnight. Just need to sell my old bikes now.

Just need to sell my old bikes now

N+1…

Ha!

(N-2)+1 in this case.

My mate has some of the reasonable Suntour forks and from the limited time I’ve had riding them they seem about as good as my old Rockshox Sektor.

If using Evans don’t forget the bike trade in. They will take pretty much anything. I built a bike up out of spares from the garage that had two front wheels! They also said people had traded bikes they’d found in the canal!!

Yeah I checked that when I spoke to them yesterday, I’ve got BC discount too, and I get 7% off through work vouchers so it works out quite reasonable.

I can’t wait, just need to get these other two gone to raise the funds.