PaulRivers

I tried front suspension when I was last looking for a new bike, I did not feel it did anything for me. Suspension is designed for handling big bumps. It didn't reduce road vibration. It didn't feel like it gave me better grip on the road. The only thing it did was let me plow into bigger obstacles which I could have otherwise gone around - and most of which didn't help in riding (I still couldn't hop up onto the curb parallel to me while riding, for example).

If I wanted maximum comfort with reasonable speed, I'd get a bigger tire that's higher quality and designed for comfort, like a Schwalbe Marathon Supreme (Supreme, not Extreme, very different tires). For max comfort with lower impact on speed I'd get around 40c - that seems to be max grip without cutting into speed to much.

A fatter tire provides more grip, handles the smaller bumps and jostles much better than suspension, and seems to do the job that suspension does plus some. If you ever ride a fat bike (with 3"-5" tires) it's kinda funny how it feels exactly like it has suspension.

Glad the OP found something that works well, there's often several different ways to achieve the same goal, but I just found that a fatter and higher quality tire did more for improving ride quality for me than any front suspension did.

The only place I've wondered if front suspension would definitely be more helpful is in winter riding, when there's a lot of larger crap on semi-plowed trails and roads.

Just my 2 cents.

wolfchild

Yes it does defeat the purpose of suspension. Using your legs, arms and body eliminates the need for front and rear shocks on a bicycle used for commuting...The only place where a suspension may be useful is for extreme freeriding and downhill mountain biking which involves doing big drops and jumps.
I don't think any commuters here are doing 5 foot drops and riding through rock gardens as part of their daily commute.

wolfchild

My personal experience with using suspension during winter was that, a lot of road salt and extreme cold is very bad for suspension components. Yes it may help a little bit with riding over ragged, jagged, rough, uneven, bumpy frozen surface, but then comes maintenance such as replacing leaking seals and doing oil changes on the shocks, which to me is just too much trouble, not worth it... That why all of my MTB's have rigid forks.

auldgeunquers

Ah yes, suspension.

I have eschewed suspension, and have happily embraced the advantages of the the rigid ride - despite the fact that the top of my street is very rough and potholed is such manner that they are impossible to avoid. Sigh.

Then I found a bike very cheap at a yard sale - aluminium framed Raleigh dual suspension MTB of the the BSO variety. New wheels, grips, and controls and some cables and it is ready to roll (and probably soon find it's way to a new owner). So I head down takes it around the block for a test ride and was immediately reminded of a great number of the reasons I don't find suspension appealing.

Then I came around the corner and hit all those nasty pot holes and broken up pavement patches at the top of the street. GLIDE!

OK. Maybe there are some good reasons for suspension. My position stands softened.

hyhuu

Suspension has its place but for most people city riding isn't one of them. Nothing to do with respect. It's called experience.

tjspiel

Cars weigh thousands of pounds and move at higher speeds. Something has got to be able to give when you hit a pothole with a car. Even with a suspension, going over potholes is unpleasant.

There are a few different ways to ride a bike. In my opinion this is a major reason that some folks are perplexed as to why others make the choices they do and seem to be dead set against things that are obviously better.

Take front suspension for instance. Several people have mentioned that they use their arms and legs as suspension. This is highly effective. Your arms and legs have much more travel than any suspension fork. The rebound/compression damping is adjustable on the fly. Plus a front suspension only allows the wheel to absorb impacts in one direction while your arms and legs aren't nearly as limited.

Of course utilizing your arms and legs like this requires some technique and awareness. It gets harder to manage on surfaces that are extremely irregular. Not everyone will want to ride like this. They'd rather ride a bike more or less the same way they'd ride in a car.

I'm one of those people that likes to ride in a very active way. I've commuted on a bike with a front suspension (my winter bike) and I understand the appeal. When it started acting up though I swapped it out with a carbon fork and I've been very happy.

bmthom.gis

I still try to avoid potholes and such while driving! I would like my suspension/tires to last as long as possible on my and the wife's car.

My first bike I bought to get back into riding had suspension (Specialized Expedition Sport). It was heavy, and I could feel myself lose power when trying to go fast and/or uphill. To me, the only time suspension makes sense is if one is participating in mountain biking. My commuting bikes don't need the added headache (or weight) and the possibility of the fork blowing seals etc. Suspension forks aren't maintenance free like rigid forks are.

To each their own, but that's why I stick with rigid unless I am on the trails.

cyccommute 

Not at all. If the bicycle is a hard tail, you almost have to stand on a big impact. If the bike is a dual suspension bike, they still handle big impacts better when the rider gets off the saddle. Watch a downhiller sometime, they aren't sitting on the saddle for most of their run.

On a side note, suspension on mountain bikes is less about comfort and more about control. Riding rigid off-road is much more challenging than using a front suspension fork. The wheel can become trapped in trail obstacles much more easily resulting in the rider crashing with a rigid fork, especially with ruts that are traveling parallel to the rider. Suspension allows the wheel to climb up and out of ruts rather then being trapped in them. You need to countersteer to steer away from the rut and rigid forks just can't find places to steer away from the rut. A suspension fork can climb up and out of the rut at slight imperfections in the surface and allow the rider to countersteer and more easily get out of the rut.

Rear suspension is also more about control than comfort. The rear wheel can more readily track the ground and allow for better climbing. That's the one thing I noticed about my first dual suspension bike. It felt like it was squirted up hills that were challenging on a hardtail. On the downhill side, the bike can roll over lots more stuff that would stop a hardtail in its tracks. You don't have to be as careful about a dual suspension bike's line as when riding a downhill. You still need to be out of the saddle, however.

That said, unless the fork is a very high end fork with a lockout capability and good valving, I wouldn't ride it on the road on a normal basis. My arms and legs do a better job. Even with a high end fork, I ride most of the time with the fork locked out, turning it on only when I have to ride over rough ice and snowpack. Last winter I even had the opportunity to test my above observations when I purposefully locked out the fork on my winter bike. It did exactly as I've described above in the it was more difficult to control the bike in soft spots of heavy snow pack. Once the suspension was back on, the bike tracked straight and true.

cyccommute 

No, it doesn't defeat the purpose for the reasons given above. Your arms and legs do more to suspend the rider but there are other reasons to use suspension...both front and rear.

I have 20 to 25 winters of experience here in Denver with suspension forks and about 10 with Moots YBB rear suspension and I've never had corrosion problems with the suspension components. The only real problem I had with suspension forks in the very early days was with the elastomers and cold. That was solved by going to a spring suspension and then by the advent of air/oil forks. That's the only kind I have now and I never have problems with that kind of fork even on the coldest days.

jimmie65

I've been commuting on mountain bikes/hybrids for over 3 years, 20+ miles a day, 3+ a week. Started on a rigid Giant Iguana, switched to a Trek Multitrack with suspension, then to another rigid Giant Rincon. I kept the old Rincon only a couple of months (for a multitude of reasons including the lack of suspension).
I'm back to a suspension now. My ride takes me down frontage roads where traffic moves at 50+ mph so I ride the shoulder - a pot-holed, gravel-filled, uneven non-road surface where I really appreciate the front suspension.

RubeRad

This.

If you want to just try out bike-commuting on something you can get from CL for minimal cost, bikes with good suspension forks are at a price point a couple hundred dollars higher than bikes with rigid forks, and weigh more. And wide enough tires/low enough air pressures, plus mindful riding work just as well.

Also, if you ever have to stand up to huff up a big hill, you might change your mind about front suspension due to the uncontrollable bobbing. But if you don't have big hills, then the weight and energy loss of low quality forks is much less of an issue.

tjspiel

Depends on the region/city. It may not be a concern for the OP at all but many North American cities put a lot more salt on the road that Denver would typically need to.

cyccommute 

Not necessarily. Colorado has gone to chemical deicing over the old salt and sand mixture in the last 10 years. I still haven't seen any deterioration of my suspension components

caloso

In my experience, the road surface in the city (where I do most of my commute miles) is much smoother and better maintained than in the country (where I do most of my training and racing miles). Maybe this is just a NorCal thing, I don't know. Are urban road surfaces really that bad in the rest of the world? I would be surprised, but I could be wrong.

fietsbob

the stiction of most suspension forks means you have to hit a good sized pothole before they move Much ..

road buzz will still be an issue.. you will feel anyhow..

ciderguy

Ride what you like! I dislike front suspensions on everything. I'd rather ride something that is rigid, but I'm not doing the kind of serious MTB riding that suspensions were designed for.
My normal commute is fairly smooth with the major bumps being train tracks and inadequately maintained chipseal roads. My 700cx40 tires at a moderate pressure are all the suspension I need.

kickstart

The roads in Seattle are really bad, some are worse than unpaved forest service roads up in the mountains.

tjspiel

What I'm saying is that the snow in Denver is typically gone in short order even without the use of salt or chemicals. Not as much road salt (or whatever the city uses) is needed to keep the roads clear, therefore bikes in Denver will not be exposed to the same amount of corrosive materials as bikes in the Northeast, Great Lakes, or Midwest regions would be (assuming similar use).

Where I live the residential streets can be covered with compacted snow and ice continuously from December into February. Winter isn't over at that point, but more frequent thaws and the higher angle of the sun make for clearer roads.

cyccommute 

I would argue that my bike sees more salt exposure because of the rapid melting of the snow. The road crews put down deicer even before the snow starts here and more if the snow starts to accumulate. But the snow does melt off more quickly which means that I have to deal with more salt water spray than you. My bikes are often covered with salt following snowstorms because of the spray. Even so, I don't see corrosion on my suspension components. This may also be a function of having higher quality forks with titanium nitride coatings.

Your salt stays trapped in the snow and ice because your freezing point is lower than the depressed freezing point from the deicer. There is a limit to how much you can depress the freezing point with salt.

gsa103

I love a good front suspension, but that's not what most commuters have. As a relatively light rider, coil forks are too firmly sprung for the suspension to do anything. A bike with a decent air fork is great, but that's not an inexpensive commuter.

Second item: All suspension forks weigh ~5 lbs. I actually weight my Fox Float 36 RC2, it's 5 lbs, and that's for a massive fork. As quality improves weight goes down, so a serious mountain bike fork and crap hybrid fork are actually very similar in weight.

tjspiel

Highly unlikely that your bikes would be exposed to more salt/deicer. My experience with winters in Denver is that there's not even any snow on the ground that vast majority of time, let alone the roads. The snow that falls has less water content, the temps are generally much warmer, and the air is dryer so less deicer is required to melt the snow that falls. There is less spray because of the lower water content and the resulting water from melted snow evaporates quickly.

I believe it's a fairly common practice in cold weather cities to put down deicer before snow or rain if it's likely to freeze and to apply more deicer as it accumulates. It is no different here. And yes, deicer is only works down to 10 degrees or so. There are plenty of days where it never gets that warm, however most days it does. And, it's not like flipping a switch where at 10 degrees it works and at 9 it doesn't. It is less effective as the temperature drops so while it does work at 15 degrees, it requires a lot more deicer to remove the same amount of snow or ice at that temp than it would if it were 25, 35, or 45 degrees.

So on most days on the roads by my house the accumulated ice and snow will slowly melt, but 3 out of the last 4 winters, it would snow or rain again (and freeze) before the roads would clear. By mid to late January, the city would limit parking to one side of the street because the roads had become too narrow for fire trucks to get through.

When we do get a major thaw, the water often just sits on the road because it can't get to the sewer grates even if they are clear (which many are not).

cyccommute 

While I agree that the highway departments should put down less deicer here, that isn't the case. They over apply it to the point where the road can be slick due to water absorption from the atmosphere...a neat trick in dry Colorado. The amount of deicer applied is the same as you see in your area since the melting point depression is the same and is concentration dependent.

And while you might have salty puddles during occasional thaws, I have rivers of water running down the road a few days after every snow storm. And, because the salt is washed away following each snowstorm, we don't get much residual benefit so more has to be applied for the next snowstorm. I see lots of salt crust on my bike and have to remove it on a regular basis during the winter just like I do on my car. But I haven't seen any kind of problem with corrosion on my front shock and I've been dealing with liquid deicers here in Colorado for the last 10 to 15 years.

MRT2

I get how a good suspension fork can help soak up some of the bumps and thus save your wrists and hands a little fatigue, but how does it help with potholes? The way I see it, potholes are dangerous to both the wheel and the rider with or without a suspension fork. And the best way to deal with potholes is to steer around them or try to jump over them.

Leebo

Change to a lighter coil inside. As a beefy rider, i use the heavier coils

Leebo

Ride what you like. Some of my commuters have front sus forks, awesome. Great for tracking the front tire in deep, rutted frozen paths. Some of my " commutes" involve 8-10 miles of singletrack.