when the weather is dry, i commute 28 miles/day through the city of chicago on my titanium road bike with 23's @ 130psi. i find riding on skinny, high-psi tires to be magical, it feels like a steel wheel on a steel rail - no rolling resistance at all.

i think the carbon fork on my road bike makes it tolerable though. there's no way i'd want to run 130psi tires on my hybrid with its aluminum fork.

I will second the comment about a J type fork. I had a touring bike with an aluminum frame and fork and switched all components over to a 2008 Kona Jake the Snake which has a Carbon fork. I thought the Jake was far stiffer in all aspects including the fork. The odd think about eh Aluminum fork I had was that it was very springy and had a good bend to it thus absorbing a lot of shock.

Ultimately, go with front suspension if you want a smooth ride... There was a great rant by bike snob a while back contrasting Carbon with Aluminum. He suggested it was a lot of hype.... Honestly, I really can't tell a big difference. I have 2 bikes with Carbon forks, Bikes without and they feel the same to me. I also have a tandem with front suspension and that certainly gives a smooth ride with it's long wheelbase.

I have the Nashbar Cyclocross Carbon Fork on my Cross bike and I am very pleased with it. I weigh 240 to 250 depending on my lifting program, so differences in ride are not imagined. I ride very hard, load up with cargo, do short tours, and I also use this bike in paceline training. The thing that made the biggest difference with the AL frame on my cross, however, was the Thudbuster ST seatpost.

The Thudbuster is amazing, and it seemed to synergize with the carbon fork and make it even more relevant. The combo is a complete killer and I highly recommend them both together. You will have the best of both worlds with a stiff and responsive frame without nearly as much of the brittleness.

bike snob can rant all he wants, i have a bike with a carbon fork and a bike with an aluminum fork and there is a noticeable difference between the two.

What about carbon versus steel? I don't have any aluminum forked bikes, but I have a hard time telling the difference between my curved steel forks and my straight carbon forks.

^ steel is a fine fork material as well, i just figure that if i'm gonna go through the trouble of replacing my aluminum fork, why not also try to save a little weight at the same time by going carbon.

You've got black wheels, black tires, black handlebars, black cranks, black hubs, a black seat bag, black seat, black seatpost, and, a black water bottle cage.

I think CF forks will be an asthetic improvement over your orange ones, it's just the photoshop job that isn't so hot.

^ i dunno, i kinda like the aesthetic purity of the fork matching the frame. it makes the bike look "whole".

then again my titanium road bike has a black carbon fork that doesn't match the frame and it still looks quite nice.

i guess you could say i'm torn. my desire for greater vibration damping from a carbon fork is battling my desire to maintain the bike's aesthetic integrity as is.

which desire is stronger? i'm gonna have to do some real deep-down soul searching on this one...........

Optimal tire pressure is dependent on the volume of the tire and your weight. The lighter you are and the bigger the tire, the lower the optimal PSI. At some point it does slow you down to be bouncing off of imperfections rather than having the tire flex a little and just go over them.

Sheldon Brown has a chart somewhere. A lot of folks are under the impression that Max PSI means Max performance and it isn't true.

it can be true, if you've got mirror smooth surfaces to ride on, then max pressure will give you the best performance from a rolling resistance standpoint (though i wouldn't want to ever have to make a turn on a mirror smooth surface with a super inflated tire).

but more important to me than raw performance is reducing my rolling resistance to a point that is still safe. on my road bike, i've found that if i inflate my rubinos up to their max 145psi, the contact patch gets too small for the weight of me and my bike and handling starts getting kinda dicey. but down at around 130psi, i get that sweet "steel wheel on a steel rail" ride quality that i love while still having enough contact patch with the road surface to be relatively safe. if it's even a little damp out, i'll bleed out air down to around 110psi (though i do try to avoid riding my road bike altogether when precipitation/wetness is a potential factor).

I'd say go for it. Seems like a carbon fork is something you'd actually benefit from. And it also sounds like you won't need the torque key.

That sounds like a good endorsement for carbon, if you ask me. The curve in your steel fork is acting as a spring, absorbing some of the bumps. Your straight carbon fork is a column that transmits the bumps up to your arms, but is stiffer, so nice for sprinting when you stand on the pedals. If the carbon one feels the same as the curved ones despite this, yay carbon!

I'm surprised that 700x32 tires aren't providing a comfortable ride. Can't see any reason why a CF fork wouldn't help. If it doesn't, then it's time to start thinking about a new bike. How about a nice Surly Cross Check, or better yet, a Surly Long Haul Trucker with 26 inch wheels? If a steel touring bike with fat 26 inch tires and a long wheelbase isn't comfortable enough for you, then maybe it's time for a recumbent trike?

Mike

I'm definitely going to ride a recumbent trike when I get old. With a fairing and a big orange flag. Gonna grow a beard and a gut, too.

for me, it's not that my hybrid with 700x37 tires is uncomfortable overall, i can just tell a pretty noticeable difference in "road buzz" between my road bike which has a carbon fork and the hybrid which has an aluminum fork. the road buzz issue isn't serious for my short little 15 mile commuting runs to work, but it would still be nice to feel less buzz through the bars if the solution is really as simple as scrapping the aluminum fork for a carbon one.

Decades ago, the solution was a J bend at the bottom of a steel tapered fork blade.
It flexed there and provided the desired added comfort.
and wheels with tires about an inch and a half wide.

I would never use anything but steel fork. I don't trust carbon. CF components can fail when you least expect it.
Who cares about saving few grams of weight. I know of two guys who had a CF handle bar break just as they were starting to ride the trail.

^ It's true. Carbon will aslpode on ya, every time. It's because they stick itty bitty little bombs in the tubing before it leaves the factory. You can actually have safe carbon bike parts, you just need to pull the asplosives out before you ride them.

I destroyed an aluminum frame in a minor crash, and a steel frame when I got hit by a car. If I hadn't noticed the damage in either case and kept riding the bikes, I could be telling people how steel just failed mysteriously on me, out of the blue for no reason whatsoever.

two comparable forks from bike nashbar:

carbon disc/v-brake fork - 722 grams

cro-mo disc/v-brake fork - 1332 grams


that's a difference of 610 grams (~1.3 pounds). not an earth shattering difference, but also more than a "few grams of weight".

Well - I went down on a bike with a carbon fork. It was on a wet wooden bridge (of course I fell) and the front wheel smashed into the side of the bridge. The front wheel was a reinforced strong wheel and it bent something fierce but my carbon fork was fine - no signs of trauma. If that was steel, it would have for sure at least bent.

So - although I don't care either way - I don't buy into the myth of carbon breaking but I also don't think it is so much smoother. J bend is the way to go. If you have straight forks - then that is likely what you want to avoid regardless of carbon aluminum or cromo.

I like carbon fiber, but it does tend to hide damage from the type of fall you described, that only shows up on x-rays. Damage to metal is usually more apparent.

It is a myth that a J-bent fork is more flexible than a straight fork. They will both flex about the same for comparable dimension forks.

i have a bike with a straight blade carbon fork and one with a straight blade aluminum fork. the carbon fork is very noticeably less "buzzy". j-bends might do other wonderfully magical things to forks as well, but even just comparing like for like (ie. straight blade with straight blade), i like my carbon fork a whole hell of a lot more than my aluminum fork. maybe it's just a design issue and i need to find a better designed aluminum fork, but if i'm replacing my aluminum fork anyway, i might as well just go carbon. i've heard and read a lot of experiences from others about how going with a carbon fork improved the ride of their bike. along with my own experiences, i'm inclined to believe that there might be something to it.

Replacing an aluminum fork with a CF fork will decrease the harshness of your ride to a degree. However, as the fork is only one part of a larger assembly of parts, do not expect a dramatic change. The frame, tires, wheels, seat post, handlebars, stem and saddle each play a part in the ability of the bike to handle uneven surfaces.

^ i'm not expecting a dramatic change by switching to carbon, i am only hoping it provides for a less "buzzy" ride quality than my current aluminum fork.

Winwood, Ritchey and White Bros. are highly regarded for disc-specific CF forks. Not sure about the Nashbar. I'd be interested in a ride report if you end up getting a CF fork.

yeah, in my research, i've come across all those other brands for carbon disc forks, the only problem is that they're all at least twice as expensive as the nasbar model. sometimes you get what you pay for, but at the same time i also dislike needless mark-up that comes with name-brand parts. online reviews of the nashabr fork seem pretty positive, and considering this is just an upgrade for a back-up commuter bike, not some competition CX race bike, i don't really need super high end performance, i just need "good enough".



if i do go forward with the carbon conversion, i'll for sure post a ride report. however, due to current funding priorities, it's likely i won't get around to until next spring, if at all. my current aluminum fork isn't terrible or anything, it's just not as good as i suspect a carbon fork might be.