M_V's multitude of bikes and adventures in the land of framebuilding

Way way overpriced. If I remember, FOX just released their own dropper (this thing is a glorious chunk of machined alloy) which comes in 27.2. Either that, or I'm dreaming and have an itch to dropper my Genesis.
Did you just get that Green destroyer?

Afaik the only 'decent' dropper available in 27.2 is the Thomson and on CRC at least the 27.2 version comes at a premium over the 30.9 etc ones.

I've just bought the same frame as the green bike but in Orange. Hoping it's been delivered whole I'm out at work today.

Crap iphone photo for now but got it finished this morning. Hope to get it out tomorrow and hit some snowy trails.

So the forks in the pic above sadly leaked both oil and air and have been returned.

I've now picked up a Tora fork but the spring in it is waaay to soft for me. I can get an extra firm replacement from TF Tuned or I could try and find a reliable used air fork OR I can think outside the box a bit...

26" forks with long travel, qr dropouts and a straight steerer are few and far between it seems. I'd prefer to stick to qr dropouts as I'm on a budget and moving to anything else means having to buy a hub or wheel. I need the long travel part to keep the geometry of the bike correct or rather, I need the a2c length of a long travel 26" fork to keep the geo correct.

69er
A short travel (or rigid) 29er fork would, in the very few cases I've researched, have an a2c around what I need and given that I'm used to riding rigid I don't imagine I'd miss the travel too much. I'm not smart enough to figure out what the effect would be of having the front axle a bit higher off the ground with a 29er wheel than it is/would be with a 26er wheel.

Fat Front
I could also go for a fat front wheel (and fork) but that stuff all seems a bit overpriced for what it is to me still. I could strip the undrilled 38mm rim out of the front wheel I got from Onza and rebuild that to a disc hub and that should be wide enough for a fat tire, the Dirt Wizard and Knard both say 35mm minimum rim width.

How long is long?

The only info i can find on the frame says to use a 130-150mm fork.

I think the a2c of a 150mm fork seems to be around 500mm.

there should be loads of slightly older forks fitting that description if you don't mind them being older.

What @7Üp said. If you feel like tinkering, some of these older straight steered forks had spacers inside the negative air chambers (Air being the operative word) with a removable spacer that increased travel by a fair bit.

Or or or....120mm forks with proper fatties if clearance allows! I wanna see that beast live!

I don't mind older if they work. At over 200lb though I think I'm going to crash through travel on a stock coil spring pretty quickly so I really need to be looking at air forks but then air forks develop leaks...

ebay ahoy

Older ones I'm not sure about, but the guy I work with is the kind of rider that stocks cartridge bearings with tyres as regular replacements and all he uses is air. On the plus side, seals are easy to source.

Revelations from a while back could be had for you're looking for if I remember right. 140-50mm with QR and Dual air. Not sure what year though.

Yeah I have a few Revelations in my ebay watch list just now.

A lot of the forks I'm finding are battered though, I guess that comes with the long travel territory.

120mm forks with proper fatties if clearance allows! I wanna see that beast live!

I could definitely fit a 2.4 or 2.5 in the frame, fork clearance might be a different story I guess though. I am watching a set of Maverick SC32 forks which can supposedly take a proper fat tyre.

AFAIK you can get adaptor that'll allow you to run normal quickr elease axles on thru axles frame.

We have a Trek full sus with that exact system in place, the fork have a small adaptor for standard quick release to thread through.

Is the adaptor not on the hub rather than the fork? I've if my front hub was a Pro2 I could get adapters for qr, 15mm, 20mm and maverick forks. It's an older hope hub that I have though which isn't adaptable.

The model I know of is basically a small bolt that you screw into the fork to allow a normal QR wheel to slot in.

Bontrager have that I reckon, gotta do more digging, but it sound like a great solution.

Found it, it's on the Trek Fuel EX, it's more complex than I though and look like to be specific to a frame rather (ABP Convert).

marzocchi marzocchi marzocchi

Their earlier fork were great for me before they were brought out by Suntour and move production from Italy to Taiwan.

Have they now gotten more reliable?

I don't know. The two ive had are pre 2004. Both really good.

Make sense, they were sold to Suntour in 2007.

Dunno of the relevance but my old set of Rock Shox Dual Air Race from 2002 still don't leak air - well they had gone flat after sitting unused for about 6 years, pumped them up and they were fine for the 4 weeks I was back in aus. Maybe worth looking for an old set? Not heavy either - can't remember the travel though 100mm at max I think.

The Rockshox Reba SL is my top choice for value, weight and reliablity.

I think a pre Suntour Marzocchi is going to be where it's at.

Anyone got experience with using/working on such forks?

There's a DJ2 on ebay just now, travel is right, price is very right but I've read that the rather basic damping can struggle on repeated hits.

I've also read that on the purely coil sprung models (dj2 is coil with air assist) bottoming out can be cured with increasing the amount of oil in the fork rather than changing the spring for a heavier one?