First impressions

Just been out on the local craggy singletrack with the new forks, and we’d love to tell you we creamed through every section our faultless riding complemented by the super succulent performance of the fork. Unfortunately (A) because it’s Friday (B) I’ve got toothache (C) The Stiffee is not the sort of ultra fast handling bike you want to be riding on a slow thinking day (D) the woods are evil leafy wet rocky rooty treachery hell at present (E) All of the above, I was riding like a complete donkey and spent most of the two hours on my butt.On the rare sections i kept it together the fork is already gulping down the lousiest line choices and boulder strikes even in its 80mm setting and there’s no trace of bottom out thud even though we’ve obviously grounded it a few times. Rebound damping is the usually sublime Pace quality, floating the bars through drops or hits without ever being caught out at full or hal compression, and tracking nicely over small trial chatter. Initial stiction was beginning to loosen on the way back so we wound on 1/4 of a turn of damping, but from experience the small bump float – though good at the moment – will plush out considerable over the next ten hours or so. Against the Psylo Race’s we’ve been riding recently, compression damping is a lot smoother and more progressive giving better initial and bottom out responses and the spring stack is more fluid than the air spring over the little stuff. Tracking stiffness is (unsuprisingly) down on the 20mm Tullio bolt thru axle version but it’s as tight as any of the big normal hub forks thanks to the twin brace arrangement. We’re going to stick on discs, jack the travel up to 100mm and continue the breaking in process and bring you a full report in due course, but for now they are looking (and feeling) very good indeed. In fact I’m pretty sure I’d still be out there in a heap now if they hadn’t looked after me so well.