"Last night....

I tried turning a 2006 specialized hardrock frame in to a road bike/cross bike

I put a road fork in it, and the handle-ing was so poor. But on a straight sprint, it was flying. So it was basically like a tri-bike. Cornering poor, but fast. I disasembled it. Makes me wonder if theres a happy medium in between road fork and big-long-heavy mtb suspension fork."


This is because the rake of the forks on your hard rock are 38mm(Taken from 2009 specialized website, I doubt this has changed much in 2 years), and a good majority of road forks are somewhere between 43-45mm. There some manfacturers that use forks with less/more rake but they use head tube angles to compensate and the end result(trail) is still the same.

Here is some good reading on how rake and trail affects handling:

http://davesbikeblog.blogspot.com/20...le-bit-of.html

http://velonews.com/article/7322