Bicycle Mechanics - New Suspension Forks for an older bike

Looks like I'm in the market for a new suspension fork. The bike mechanic said my Manitou 2's are useless unless I can track down replacement elastomer bumpers. Yeah, right! BTW, I found a site called Bike Pro that has something that mught be what I need, but there is absolutely no contact info on the site... go figure!

I've asked him about the specs I need to get when shopping around for a fork. Since it's an older setup, I'll need to upgrade to V-Brakes and some adpater gizmo so I can use my '93 Deore XT brake levers with V-Brakes. I've currently got cantilever brakes. I've been looking around the web for some deals and some say that they have no brake bosses included in the package. Are brake bosses either included or not included on suspension forks or is it something that can be added if they aren't on them?

Thanks,
Jerold

I can offer several helpful tips - I'm actually upgrading from a setup like you're talking about upgrading to.

First, saw your M-2 thread. Don't know much about the M-2s so I didn't chime in. Down at the bottom may have been a bottoming elastomer? I think my M-3s had something like that. Anyway, I have some M-3 elastomers I could send you. I think they would fit but I'm not sure. PM me if you want them.

As far as upgrading, a couple hurdles I came across when I upgraded from the M-3s. First, threaded forks are hard to come by. I ended up going to a high-end fork (couldn't stand the thought of adding two pounds to the bike vs. my ultralight M3s) that was threadless. At the same time I obviously had to get a headset and stem to go with them.

You have to make sure the forks at least have sockets for the brake bosses. If you have that you can get the bosses themselves at any bike shop.

Beyond that, all you need is a TravelAgent to make your old canti levers work with the v-brakes.

Chris

Chris:

Thanks for your reply and offer. If you are selling them, I'll take whatever elastomers you have. Let me know how much... I'm pretty sure that the M-2's and 3's use the same set since that site I found Bikepro.com lists one set that works for M-2,3 and 4's.

I've sent you a PM, but it the 2st time, so I hope you get it...

P.S. I wasn't able to screw the bolt back into the tube after I cleaned off the melted bumpver and replaced it with the yellow one. Any idea what I was doing wrong?

Of all the thing I found in the original box, it didn't have any instructions for the elastomer reaplacement.

Thanks,
Jerold