Mountain Biking - Opinions on Maverick forks (both SC and DC)

I'll start riding a bit again in a few weeks, some light riding with relatively inexperienced friends. I've been off riding any of my bikes seriously for a long time, and have lost a lot of strength... I can feel it.


I'm looking for something lightweight to plug onto the front which is nevertheless freeridable. I don't think I've lost my technique but I'm nowhere near as strong as I used to be, so I'm considering what to buy to put a couple of my heavy-duty freerides on a diet. Playing mix and match with spares for other areas of the bike at the moment (and I'll probably need to buy new stuff anyway), and bike 1 is a Rocky Mountain Switch with beefed-up specs (which I'll now have to unbeef again), bike 2 is a Santa Cruz Bullit with 888's and other unneccesarily heavy parts for my immediate use.


Are the Mavericks what I should be looking at, or should I play safe and go with the '05 Z1? Given the constant that I have those two frames to play with, what would you put on the front (and other suggestions too... drivetrain, etc if you have them) for a reasonably lightweight true "all-rounder"? I have a lot of spares and parts lying around, but most of it is 2000-2002.

Did I just hear Z1 and light in the same phrase? Just recently ditched my Z1 for a different fork because of the weight. I would look at a Pike if you want a lighter weight 6" coil fork. The mavericks are nice trail forks, I wouldn't consider them freeride forks though IMO.

What's the 'real world' front weight diference (in terms of getting the front end up and just 'feel') would you say there is between the Pike and the Z1?

Thanks for the (lack of ;) ) opinions everyone.


I got two of the Pike Team and Z1 FR1's in the end, delivered along with my 'bike food' for this year. The truckload (literally) arrived on Friday so I was busy packing everything away and I've just completed plugging the Pike on the Switch and the Z1 on the Bullit. I must say that I miss the actual QR on the QR20 dropouts of the Z1. I've not ridden anything yet, so opinions will have to wait. I was hoping to get one fork for all the similar-class bikes, so that spares were easier to store and deal with, but it's been abandoned. I'll see how I get on with both.


A sign of my rustiness is that I made a very elementary (rescuable... kinda) mistake while fitting one of the Z1's and also made a rather bigger cock-up on the 888RC which will probably need a new steerer/crown assembly... :( Drat.