Saturday, September 26, 2009

Another Broken Fork

So I broke my fork again, for the second time in less than four months. Granted, I punish my bike and make it do things it wasn't initially designed for, but this is getting ridiculous. So, to remedy the problem, I'm not going to rebuild my fork with new lowers yet again, I'm going to get a new fork... and punish it.

Below is a short video of the last time I made it up to La Cumbre to go riding... this line probably contributed to a crack near the axle on my fork. It was one of the more technical (and to be honest, scary) lines that I've ridden recently. It's MUCH steeper than it actually looks. I wasn't extremely satisfied with my flow but I just couldn't ride it any faster with the bike I have (again that problem fork makes bombing gnarly downhill nearly impossible).

And I had to dab twice... arghh! However, it was so steep that on the first section the initial line I laid out I couldn't do because I literally couldn't turn, so I just pointed it and hoped that my nearly 3.5" of travel (oh my!) up front could take it. The top worked out, but I could have ridden the second band of rock cleaner.

Anyway, enjoy, and as usual forgive the low quality video, we're still using the Pentax point and shoot!

Bolivian Mountain Biking from Jason Topa on Vimeo.

2 comments:

  1. what fork do you have? maybe you need a stronger fork.

    i ride mucho hard and have never broken a lower. crowns yes, but not lowers.

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  2. Well, right now it's an old Marzocchi z150 cobbled with Dirt Jump lowers of some variety. I broke the original lowers (fork arch), and now the horribly engineered flip lock axle piece on the new lowers. Yes, i do need a stronger fork, much, much stronger. Probably going with the Bomber 55's next, we'll see how those do.

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