Kona Hahanna fork help

Hi, I just got a second hand Kona Hahanna and I'm looking for some advice... apologies in advance for my cluelessness, as until now I haven't done anything more serious to a bike than change an inner tube.

I think it's a 16" 2009 model (currently getting serviced, or I would put up pictures) and it has RST 280 forks, but they have locked and I'm looking to replace them. Cycling I'll be doing will be through cities and forest trails, rather than anything particularly hardcore, so I was thinking of P2 forks. And that's about the end of my technical knowledge - I have no idea what variant is right for the bike. Could anyone help me with what length / other factors would be the right one to choose?

Thanks

Welcome to the forum :-D

Do you mean 1999 model rather than 2009? I'm not sure what travel those forks are (or at least should be ;-) ). As a guide, suspension corrected fork lengths would be roughly as follows:

60mm travel ~ 400mm axle-crown (a-c) rigid
80mm travel ~ 420mm a-c rigid
100mm travel ~ 440mm a-c rigid

Hope this helps.

Regards

Gah, of course I do! I admit I expected to come across as a newbie, but not by quite that much...

The travel (should be!) 2.5", so that would make it 400mm. I wasn't sure if the fact that you could get the Hahanna in a rigid format would make a difference.

Thanks!

Yeah, something in the 400-410mm kind of area should be fine then. Once you get your bike back, you can always measure your existing a-c to be sure. If the fork is fudged, it might be a little bit more than I said due to it not sagging when you sit on the bike.

Regards

I'd say anything up to 80mm travel would be absolutely fine, and 100mm with a shorter stem if you can be bothered to do this. If I was you I'd be keeping my eyes out for some period Bombers, for my money the most reliable fork I've ever used.

Bike is back from the service, with more problems than I'd hoped, but I'm planning on dealing with the fork first. I think it's actually a 1998 model. Seatpost and saddle are new, the last owner changed the handlebar for some reason, but I think the rest is original.




I've had a look on eBay to see what sort of offerings there are, and the other thing that seems important is the steerer length. Proving my ignorance again, what should this measurement be of? I did what seemed like the obvious one, coming out with 178mm.



MarkWashington - I've had a bit of a look into suspension forks, but I was a bit wary that they needed more maintenance than rigid ones. Unfortunately I'm in London, and everyone I know who knows anything about bikes is in Glasgow, so I'm aiming for simplicity! Also, they're probably sightly overkill for the type of cycling I'll be doing. Tomorrow involves the crazy hardcore mountain biking adventure of... a tow path.

What are the other problems?

The steerer measurement you're showing with your tape is approximately what it would be if you were using a threadless Aheadset style .... erm .... headset and modern stem. However, what you have there is an old school threaded headset/steerer combo with a quill stem which fits together in a different kind of way, so your existing steerer will stop near the top of the headtube.

I will leave it to one of the retro gurus around here to outline the forks options/parameters if you want to keep your existing headset and stem, as it's not really my strong point.

Regards

The handlebars on it at the moment are weirdly small - the gear shifters are a bit squashed. The rear mechanism is also on close to its last legs, but that's not something I'm particularly comfortable tackling myself, so I'm going to wait a bit on that one.

That makes sense about the steerer, unfortunately! There don't seem to be shorter ones on sale at the moment, but there is a 125mm one in existence which I think is probably what I would want.

Thanks again for your help.