Sandy's Blog

Today Postie brought me some new forks. Actually they are the model from 2 years ago, and identical to what I have on the bike at the moment. What gives? Are you kerazy?

Well, looking back in Super Sandy Accounts to December 2003, I paid £347.97, which is a hang of a lot more than the £195 I paid for this ‘new’ (50 miles of use) set. Also I have been weighing up the annoyance and risk of my current forks failing, especially if I am abroad or something, and reckon that new gear is in order. An internal rod is snapped in my current forks, and there is a big gouge out of the front where the brake line used to go - entirely my bad.

I had a look to see what equivalent Marzocchi are doing at the moment, and the fork they have available seems to be a bit gimmicky in my opinion. One side air one side coil, TST, TAS, ETA and Rebound Adjustment. My current fork has ETA (quite handy) and Rebound Adjustment (not so handy), but both are broken due to me riding the forks into the ground and trusting Edinburgh Bike Un-Cooperative.

The other manufacturers suspension forks don’t impress me much: Fox forks are twice the price and the sets I have tried aren’t that great, Rock Shox seem to be making better forks these days but I’m not convinced they have the bomb-proofness of bombers, Magura & Manitou I’m steering well clear of! Problem is from experience my new forks will take a good 6-12 months of riding to properly ‘bed in’ and feel sweet, but I’ll be trying to treat these better than my old set, thats for sure.

Some more random photos then, here is one of me ‘quarantined’ in the office when I had the cold at the beginning of February, and a nice picture from a Saturday night ride a few weeks ago when there was deep snow in places.