Trek 8500 forks?

Anyone with opinions of Fox F100 RL, w/lockout, air adjust, rebound, alloy steerer, 100mm?

They’re perfectly good, if I was buying new I’d buy SIDs, but I wouldn’t look to ditch the forks if they came on a bike.

Fox have been held in very high regard since their appearance, but they’re basically the same forks they were in 2002!

Hello Si.

I promise I don’t work for Trek (I don’t even own one)!

The RLs would be the fork I would buy, if they weren’t only available to manufacturers. I have Talas RL and Vanilla RLCs on two of my bikes – both perform pretty faultlessly. Despite their problems from a few years ago (long story), I won’t use anything else just now.

The RLs are only missing the compression damping from the RLCs, which retail for around £600. The stock setting for compression is effectively decided by Trek and Fox – who frankly, probably know where to set it better than the rest of us.

The 8500 has no obvious weakness in the spec. Even the brakes have the XTR ti pistons specially requested by Trek (helps with the heat) which you can’t normally buy.

I’m really close to ordering one myself – I think it’s a close to perfect £1,500 bike. Looks pretty too!

Ah the pistons aren’t Ti, just the backing plates of the pads, same thing on the Remedys, bit of a swizz really. Nice bike though.

Which is nothing special, all the M970 stock pads are ti backed, just means they cost a fortune to replace!

The 8500 is a nice bike though!

Really? Not the end of the world, but a bit misleading!

Still, nice spec. The 9.8 looks like great value too…

The 9.8 is a really nice looking bike I must admit! I like their ‘no-cut seatmast’ design.

8500 it is then, probably! It’s either that or rl 853 with fork upgrade and XT for £1106………….what would you do??