Right, long story short:
Have some Rockshox Recon RL 120mm – they’re f***ed.
Cost of repair £100+ (forget it!).
Bought some Rockshox Recon RL 100mm – cheap, but missing 20mm of travel.

Now, they’ll sit on a Marin Nail Trail 6 that I bought, basically, so I could pull wheelies on my commute. So the shorter travel isn’t a problem in terms of big impact (unless jumping off kerbs count?).

I do, however, wonder what difference it’ll make to the riding position. To maintain the same ‘sort of’ position, could I just leave an extra 20mm on the steerer tube when I cut it to size? Or have I missed something? I bet I’ve missed something, haven’t I?

I know I could adjust the travel, but if it’s not 100% necessary, I prefer not to.

Anyway,

Thanks for reading!

Most RS forks can have their travel adjusted, either by adding/removing spacers or swapping the air spring, so you may be just need a youtube video and half an hour in the shed to modify the new forks. (Rebas need spacer taken out, I think)

20mm on the steerer will keep your bars the same height, but there’ll be subtle geometry changes… head and seat angle about a degree steeper, bottom bracket a little lower. Maybe irrelevant for just commuting.

That’s basically what I wanted to hear 🙂

I have a road bike project on the go that will eventually replace it as a commuter. At that point, I’ll mess about with the travel and make it trail-focused.

It’ll give me a chance to practice on the forks I took off; which are shot-to-sh*t!

Thanks!