Small bike maniac ~ Translated your handle and read your fork thread. http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=533277

Reminds me of some of the moments I had in swapping in the suspension fork the first time. Going from a 1 inch factory stem riser to a 1-1/8 was the holdback until I found the Airnimal Joey riser. I made my swap mainly for the disc brake mount, as the rim brakes were overheating on downhilling. Yet no one had these Echo Team forks in stock. So I went with the Mecs Saso, which I have beat quite to death over three years of hard riding, and hard on me, give a kid a pair a wings and no flying lessons, and the result ~ plenty of road, trail, gravel rash.

I just got out the old food/bakers scale, and the factory fork with headset/bearings/locknuts, less the riser, is exactly one kilo, not bad. The Mecs (carbon fiber over alloy) is 1.6 kilo with only the crown race and no bearings. I don’t want to rip my front end off just to measure the Echo Team fork but I remember it being a bit less than the Mecs, about the same as the factory fork, to my hand balance, but it is basically one solid chunk of machined aluminum with the legs and super thick riser welded on, i.e. strong.

I looked at those carbon fiber beauties, as you have there, and then asked a few merchants how much they would support, and the dream ended there for me. I’m 1.89m/6’-2” and 87 kilo/192 pounds/13.7 stones, without pack, H2O or clothing, when I'm on vacation and fit and riding 50+k/day.

I had thought to use (see attached) a GA Force Kilo 20” beauty from German-a http://www.german-a.de/en/, but again I was too big/heavy from the factory; 85 kilo max for that fork. The GA Force Kilo 20" comes with disc and/or V-brake mounts but no caliper mounts and weighs about the same as the Mecs after the shock is mounted, yet no dive. Brake dive, is what cracked my helmet and knocked me out, well, dive and reckless abandon.

I had a very slight, to my fingers, burr on the top of my Echo team fork stem. The Airnimal Joey riser insert wouldn’t slip on my new fork either. So I sanded and sanded the fork riser tube until the top was a bit beveled and viola that Joey riser inner sleeve finally slid on. Your fork may also have a burr or be slightly out of round at the top. Your eyes and hands may not feel the ovalness or the burr but I’ll bet your micrometer will, and some fine sandpaper, patience and sweat will even it out.

I also had to cut the fork riser on the Mecs, as I didn’t want to use 6cm/60mm of spacers and needed to keep the actual fork length as short as possible. I measured “100 times” with all the spacers, bearings, bearing caps and so on, with the fork in place. With my tubing cutter, I still cut the fork tube riser 4mm long on purpose to make sure the star nut cap would seat well when snugged over the Joey stem riser insert.

I have compensated with a high-rise stem, and a Dimension Trekking bar that has a bit of rise, to make up for the rather short 9” Airnimal Joey stem riser. I needed to keep the fork length as short as possible so with the stem riser/stem/bars assembly Q/Released and the front wheel off, the folded Xoot will still fit in my roll-up-able soft-bag quickly, without pulling the fork or the back wheel.

The question is, is it worth ½ kilo, or all the fussing for disc brake mount in my case? I say keep going, you’re almost there, sand a little, maybe cut a little, put it all together, what you have, and see if your ultra light lowered front end is what you like. It may be the bee’s knees for you, like having a matching brushed alloy super duty fork with a heat dispersing Avid Juicy disc on the front is to me.


http://www.myspace.com/xootrswift

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