Which Replacement Carbon Forks?
By Alastair Hamilton
© copyright by bikecyclingreviews.com
Javier F Vazquez has a Merlin Agilis road bike, but he has noticed that his forks are not looking in good condition and might break at any moment, so he is looking for a replacement set of carbon forks and wants to know which ones we can recommend
Question: I am looking for advice on a carbon fork for my road bike. The bike is a Merlin Agilis. I mostly use it for recreational rides and some 100 mile rides. I noticed recently while cleaning and lubricating my bike that the current fork is fatigued and Therefore no longer safe. I need a fork that can handle my weight (280 pounds). Are there any suggestions that you can help me? Thank you.
Hi Javier,
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| Look HSC |
Bad news that your forks have fatigue, but its better that you noticed now and not later when it was too late, after they had broken!
There are quite a few replacement forks on the market, such as Oval, Kinesis, ITM, Easton, Time and Reynolds. These are all very good quality carbon forks and come in different styles, straight, raked or aero and are at various prices. I would stay away from cheap imported forks from China as they are not proven to be great, yet!
Our favorite carbon forks are the Look HSC range of forks and the best of them is the HSC5 SL, beautiful looking and top quality. Instead of adding an aluminum crown race, the Look engineers have molded a carbon crown race flange into the fork's crown. The benefits of this are three fold: a lighter headset component as no crown race is needed, a more precise steering assembly due to the bearings directly fitting onto the fork and a better overall construction of the fork as the long weave VJM carbon fiber is uninterrupted from fork blade to the steerer.
Very High Modulus (VHM) carbon fiber is a much tighter concentration of fibers per cm2 than ordinary carbon fiber. It is also baked for longer. These two qualities offer greater strength and allow for the walls of the tubes made from VHM to be thinner.
The HSC5 SL has been designed to be as efficient as possible. The blades are curved to improve lateral rigidity and thereby also improving steering accuracy while keeping a little frontal flexibility for comfort. The carbon dropouts are directly molded with the fork. The HSC5 SL only comes in 1 and an eighth inch size steering column.
This is our choice, but there are many, we suggest you go for quality as that usually guarantees strength.
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