Fork travel
 

I have a bike that has 100mm of travel and I want to upgrade it to a rockshox pike rct3 fork that has 160mm of travel. Will it affect anything to my bike/frame? It's a big upgrade!:love:

What kind of bike so you have. Tho the most likely answer is you cant/really shouldnt without drastically altering the geometry of your bicycle

I would not normally go that far. Whatever you will be doing with that 160mm of travel, your 100mm frame is probably not designed for it.

How about 140mm?

120mm tops

Don't do that.


Your bottom bracket will be really high making turns and switchbacks unruly when you are just riding along and if you hit a drop big enough to actually use all of that travel, your chain ring will basically be on the ground. You'll make a bike that is good for many things now, bad at everything.

What bike are you wanting to put this 160mm fork on?

Most likely, your bike was designed around a 100mm fork. It's acceptable to go up maybe 10mm, but jumping to a 160mm is asking for trouble. If you need a fork that large, you might want to consider purchasing a downhill/enduro bike.

120 tops! My friend changed his from a 100 to a 120 and that was drastic. The bike began to wander climbing and was less nimble turning. Descending was a little more stable as it slacked out the head angle. Sounds like you want/need a trail, enduro or even a DH bike vs what sounds like a XC model.

It's really hard to find a decent 100mm fork that can take the abuse and stop bottoming out. Is a 100mm rockshox Reba good or a 120mm Sr suntour raidon??

If you are bottoming out you either have the fork set up wrong, or is using the bike/fork outside its intended scope.
Moving to a longer travel fork is unlikely to be a good fix.
The rest of the bike will ALSO take a beating beyond its scope. A longer fork - if the bike still rides nice - will mainly mask the problem.
I'd pick the RS before the Suntour any day.

Reba is a pretty good fork.

Reba it is! Thank you guys!

The Reba will still bottom out - and you want it to. It is a good air fork, though, so you can add pressure to make it where it only bottoms out about once or twice per ride.


If you then have problems not getting small-bump compliance, you can get some bottomless tokens to adjust the ramp-up. You put them in the air side of the fork so it can run lower pressure, but ramps up the resistance on large bumps to make it more compliant. You can do this for about $20.

100 to 120 is no big deal on that bike.