Stackineering

Running old parts sometimes bites you in the arse. I've been running a Vicious Cycles rigid fork I bought off of Ivory (my go to bike part dealer) when my old Bomber died and the 1x1 fork just wasn't cuttin' it for me. It's been a solid great riding fork for me going on 2 years now. It's 438mm and worked great on my old Litespeed and Surly 1x1. It fits well on the new Moots Rigormootis, but since the frame was designed around a 470.5 mm a/c 100mm fork, it's a tad on the steep side in the current setup.

I run a 2.1 rear and a 2.35 front, so that helps keep the hta slack, but I was still missing about 7mm of a/c length. Enter bike numbers geek OldGreg. OldGreg sent me a link via chat to Ventana's site and their 7mm King base plate. Designed to add fork / down tube clearance for the ever increasing stack height of the new suspension fork designs, but I think it'll work well to give me the front lift I need on my very limited budget.

Art Bell at work

I swung by Eastside Cycles (the closest shop to my new locale and a great place to just hang out) and Dan swapped out the base plates for me. His "you'd better take this up the hill and back down the alley to see if it holds together" comment followed with "don't worry we'll be out in a few minutes to check on ya" didn't help me try to keep from my over-worrying. He knows where my buttons are.

The few short test rides have the bike riding like a bike. Perfect! 7mm is probably pretty minimal to notice, but the bike does feel a tad less front end biased now. Yard tests have it still feeling like a bike. SORBA/DSG are hosting another trail work weekend down at the Cotton Mill Preserve. I can't wait to get down and run it through the paces on the course of pain.


Why add a tall base plate and not buy a new fork? Well, I don't have the money for one, yet. I've been squirreling away all my spare change in the electronic change jar the EMIL got me a while back. Some told me to grab a taller 29'er fork, but I worry the added height will slacken the hta and combined with the longer rake the bike would be floppy. But I'm not an engineer. So I emailed a professional. He advised me on what I should do. So Walt, if you actually read this, I'm up to $189.19 now despite what the photo shows.

alms for the fork