Shook off the post night shift 'jet lag' on Saturday to fit the X Fusion Trace 36 fork to my bike. The fuckwittery of inadvertently ordering a not Boost fork to upgrade another bike which then took a different direction turned out AOK in the end. Duncan at DIYMTB kindly exchanged the fork (thank fark I hadn't cut the steerer ) and I added some $ to upgrade to the 36mm version. Last week Aust. Post tracking had the fork arriving this coming Wednesday so I was bummed about having to go to Linga Longa yesterday with the OEM fork still on the bike.
I get off the plane on Friday morning and check my emails for a tracking update and YAY it's awaiting collection from the PO. Pick it up and it's a good lookin' thing. Search shed for new Cane Creek crown race. I knew it was there somewhere but couldn't find it until Saturday.
Improvised tools :
an old Bilt stem as a cutting guide (protected with a bit of plywood) after measuring 20 times. I cut many steerers back in the day working in a bike shop but the forks weren't $1K+
a plastic C clip intended for the boat, as a drift to tap the crown race on, over a smear of grease.
a piece of 6mm threaded rod from Bunnings, along with a big washer, small washers, nuts, a couple of sockets, and a holesaw cutout plug to pull the star nut in nice and straight.
Got it all done up and played around on the 50 psi that came with the fork, wound the rebound all the way slow and bounced around a bit. All well, super smooth, so pumped it up to 100psi and got on with loading up the car.
I might have had the rebound a bit slow at both ends (with the old fork) and speeding it up a bit has the bike feeling quite poppy. More time needed to suss out the sweet spot.
Did shuttles all day yesty and the fork is awesome, I haven't got my head around exactly why it feels better - surely the extra 10mm of travel isn't going to make much of a difference, might be more that I arsed a better balance of settings.
It's hard to be sure after two weeks off the bike but I felt more confidence than last time when pointing down steep and twisty technical sections.
Will ride plenty more this fortnight, and doing WAGE rnd 3 at the end of it.