Re: Fork Brace>>>>Best 30 minute suspension mod ever.
Adding a bit of rigidity tying the forks together preventing the wheel from getting torqued sideways.
From what I saw the units don't have enough screw power to crush the cylinder tubes at all. Small allen set screws.
Let's explore a couple of things.
Let's say we're sitting in front of the bike, looking at the forks - there are three possibilities:
a) One fork lower-leg could move up the inner fork tube, independent of the other lower-leg.
b) One or more fork legs could bow outwards
c) One or more fork legs could bow inwards.
I don't see (a) happening, unless the front wheel bearings are so bad, the wheel wobbles sideways (at extreme top and bottom of tire). Even so, if the scenario were possible, there's no way the brace could hold the one leg in place, unless the "height" of the brace were something like 4-6 inches.
I can see where a brace could prevent (or lessen) (b) or (c), but I dont see how (b)\(c) could happen, esp since the inner fork is never at it's upper limit - with the bike at rest, the inner tube is submerged in the lower tube.
Okay, now another couple scenarios:
Let's say we're sitting on the side of the bike, looking at the side profile of the forks - there are two possibilities:
(d) One (or more) fork leg(s) could bow forward
(e) One (or more) fork leg(s) could bow rearward
(f) Each leg does the opposite
Seems unbelievable for this to happen; however, if either were to happen, a brace would not help, because I see the forks "rotating" within the sleeves of the brace (remember, there's only some small set screws being used with undo clamping forces to lock the forks in place).
Did I cover all potential scenarios? I am not, by a long-shot, a mechanical engineer or race-suspension engineer.
Let's examine the "preventing the wheel from getting torqued sideways". I think this would refer to (a). Where we sit in front of the bike looking towards the back and someone is standing to the side of the bike, and grabs the top of the front wheel and pushes and pulls on it. That would imply, to me, a bad axle or bearings.
Here again, I dont see how a brace could lessen this motion because of the fork leg tubes rotating inside each of the brace's "clamps".
Has anyone seen the "Superbrace simulation" ? They suggest (b) and (c) (stated as "lateral fork flex") and "torsional fork flex", my (f).
As I stated, "lateral flex" is partially believable, but I still dont see it. And with torsional flex, I can see the forks rotating within the brace.
I measured the front fork tubes' OD .... inner: 45mm, outer: 55mm. I just dont see how the forks could flex as demonstrated by superbrace. At least enough that a brace would "fix" things.