Our Guide to Buying: Bicycle Forks

How should I choose a bicycle fork?

Your forks attach the front wheel to your bike via a steerer tube that runs through the headset of your bike frame. The steerer tube is attached to your bars and stem which then allows you to steer and direct your bike. Different types of bike will need a different type of fork, so it is important that you get the right one for your bike. This buying guide is designed to help you to do that.

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Road Bike Forks

Changing your road bike fork can make a big difference to how your bike feels, in terms of handling, weight and comfort.

What are the benefits of carbon road bike forks?

The majority of aftermarket road forks are made from carbon, a material famed for being light and strong. Carbon road bike forks also do a great job of reducing road buzz, which aids comfort on long rides. Adding carbon forks, such as the Ritchey Pro Road, to a road bike is therefore a great way to drop some weight from your bike while improving comfort.

Full carbon road forks vs aluminium road forks

Full carbon road forks have a completely carbon construction, including the steerer tube. These tend to be the lightest, but most expensive road bike forks. Make sure if you’re cutting the steerer tube yourself that you use a proper carbon cutting blade. There are forks out there which have carbon legs, but with an aluminium steerer, giving almost the same performance as a full carbon, with a little added weight and less cost.

The M:Part Rigid 700c carbon road fork is constructed in this manner. If you’re just looking for a cheap replacement fork, then there’s no harm in looking at an aluminium fork - they might not be as light as a carbon fork, but they’ll cost a lot less.

Which fork size is right for me?

When buying a new road bike fork check that the steerer tube and brake mounts are compatible with your current set up. Most modern bikes will either need a tapered steerer tube (1.5” at the bottom, 1 1/8” at the top) or a straight 1 1/8” steerer tube. Older bikes may require a 1” steerer, as found on the Raleigh 1” A-Head and Threaded forks.

Most road bikes come with calliper brakes, but disc brakes are becoming more popular too, for which you’ll need a disc compatible fork, such as the Enve 2.0 Road Tapered Disc fork.

Mountain Bike Forks

How should I choose a mountain bike fork?

Whether you need MTB forks for a cross-country race bike or a downhill rig, there's a huge range of forks out there to suit. If you want to keep it simple, then rigid MTB forks might be the answer, but most people opt for the additional comfort and performance of MTB suspension forks. You need to select the correct forks for your bike based on how you ride and which steerer standard your bike is designed for. It's generally best to replace like-for-like.

A frame that comes with a 100mm cross-country fork like the RockShox 30 Gold TK as standard simply won't be designed to take the stresses that a 160mm travel all-mountain or enduro racing fork will put on it. Plus, it will impact your frame geometry negatively and make the bike handle very poorly.

Coil Springs vs Air Springs

Forks offer their suspension travel via either an air spring or a coil spring. Coil springs offer predictable and smooth performance but air springs have an advantage in that they can be adjusted to suit rider weight. How much a fork compresses under your weight – known as 'sag' - is very important as it allows the fork to extend into dips as well as absorb bumps.

Being able to adjust this is important to get maximum performance. Air springs also tend to be lighter, which means they're the most common choice for everything but extreme downhill use.

What is a damper on a bike?

The damper is a vital component in a fork, taking the energy from an impact and controlling how it's released. Many manufacturers offer forks that look externally similar but have different dampers, with cost-effective and more costly versions offering different levels of performance.

The Fox 32 Float is one such example and comes in either a cheaper 'Evolution' model or higher level 'Factory' spec. The difference is that the cheaper unit uses an 'open bath' damper where the damping oil can mix with air inside the fork, meaning that on rough descents the damping control becomes compromised. On the more expensive fork, a cartridge damper which isolates the oil from the air, is used to give consistent performance.

What are steerer tubes and what is the standard size?

Steerer tubes are the part of the fork that inserts into the frame and is clamped by your stem. There are a number of different standards for steerer tubes. Many older frames use straight 1.125” steerers, but in recent years tapered steerers, which go from 1.125” at the stem end to 1.5” at the lower end have become more common. These offer much greater stiffness and strength but aren't compatible with older frames.