2manyoranges
Old School Grand Master
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Way back in ... well, 2019 ... I was fortunate to get a Ragley Mmmbop on here, just the frame and some Manitou Mattoc forks. The forks are a minority game, not many people run anything other than RS or Fox these days. Yes, you can buy Ohlins, DVO, X-Fusion, TRP but spares tend to be a pain and some are clearly not as sorted as the 'big 2' forks. So it was interesting to run the Manitous. The Ragley is a bit of hooligan bike; - very short seatstays, 64 head angle; at 170cm tall I should notionally be on a small or medium frame, but the 2016 Large Mmmbop is quite short in reach (425mm) so fits me fine - other long low and slack bikes i have are around 450 reach. The Manitous are at 150 travel, which makes this an enduro-focussed bike. But it excels in tight singletrack nonetheless. It took a while to get the Manitous dialled in. I understand suspension but it's always a dark art or trial and error to get the sweet spot of maximum grip and decent support, combined with small bump performance. I ride most frequently in Thetford Forest - it's the nearest set of trails - and the plethora of roots endlessly test the small bump compliance of any fork - while the fast flat turns in beech forest means that you want good grip or you wind up on the floor looking foolish. Reviews of the Mattoc comment on 'cadillac smoothness' and 'good control from a stiff chassis' but I found it hard to get reasonable balance on the fork. Changing the annoying Hexlock lever axle for a Manitou bolt-through stiffened things up nicely and for not much outlay. Speeding up the rebound really helped, after getting the air pressure at a setting to give the right (30%) sag. I still had instances of front end washout - which was either terrifying or embarrassing or both - and interestingly that was solved by fitting a 50mm Renthal Apex stem to replace the Spank 35mm. What followed was years of fast fun, with a simple lube of the fork enough to keep everything running sweetly...
Then a CaneCreek Helm coil fork came up on here - which, I thought, might bring some nice small bump compliance and high grip onto the scene. With the Mattoc still performing well in the Mmmbop I decided to build up a late gen BfE and compare the two. Woah that fork is heavy. I swapped out the medium coil for a light spring, and that was perfectly specc'd for my weight - and used the internal adjustment to give me 150mm of travel. Bergtec 42.5 stem. Even in the first 100 m I could tell that the ride was Smoooooth - with the fork and steel frame really insulating trail chatter. I was not sure about whether the coil would simply blow through its travel on big hits, but a few steps and holes showed remarkable ramp up - a nice progression in the compliance. All good. Apart from two things. A tendency for the fork to tuck in (weird) and a back-of-the-brain nervousness I felt going into loose-surface corners. The tuck in was most odd - as you wound up the angle of attack in a corner, there was a point when the bike suddenly increased its rate of turn-in. Unsettling. Nothing in the geometry would suggest this would occur - not offset, or head angle.. maybe the long chainstays were causing the backend to drive the front....All became manageable with more miles, but still I couldn't ride with quite the intuitive abandon of the Mmmbop and Mattoc. Still fun, but not as dialled.
Then I noticed some clunky play in the front end of the Mmmmbop, most obvious with short sharp climbs. Time for TF Tuned to put in new bushings - the only company with ready spares for Manitou of that vintage. So off came the Mattocs and on went some 150mm Rockshox soloair Pikes from the pile in the workshop. Very well used, with irritating top out evident after fitting - a known syndrome often cause by the neg-pos connecting port being blocked with grease. On well, that will have to wait for a bit. Dial in the air pressure and open up the compression damping and off we go. And that was a BIG surprise. Decent bump compliance - on a par with the Mattoc but less impressive than the Helm - but combined with vastly superior support and grip. Big grin. I know all the trails really well, and suddenly rubble-strewn corners which always worried me were no problem - just hack through at speed - berms were a joy, and flat corners no issue. This was night-and-day difference, not a subtle change. Same tyres, same stem, but much much faster and far more secure on the ground. Big hits? No problem.
All in all - each and any of these are good forks. But small performance differences seem to add up to very substantial steps in trail realities...and grin factor...
Then a CaneCreek Helm coil fork came up on here - which, I thought, might bring some nice small bump compliance and high grip onto the scene. With the Mattoc still performing well in the Mmmbop I decided to build up a late gen BfE and compare the two. Woah that fork is heavy. I swapped out the medium coil for a light spring, and that was perfectly specc'd for my weight - and used the internal adjustment to give me 150mm of travel. Bergtec 42.5 stem. Even in the first 100 m I could tell that the ride was Smoooooth - with the fork and steel frame really insulating trail chatter. I was not sure about whether the coil would simply blow through its travel on big hits, but a few steps and holes showed remarkable ramp up - a nice progression in the compliance. All good. Apart from two things. A tendency for the fork to tuck in (weird) and a back-of-the-brain nervousness I felt going into loose-surface corners. The tuck in was most odd - as you wound up the angle of attack in a corner, there was a point when the bike suddenly increased its rate of turn-in. Unsettling. Nothing in the geometry would suggest this would occur - not offset, or head angle.. maybe the long chainstays were causing the backend to drive the front....All became manageable with more miles, but still I couldn't ride with quite the intuitive abandon of the Mmmbop and Mattoc. Still fun, but not as dialled.
Then I noticed some clunky play in the front end of the Mmmmbop, most obvious with short sharp climbs. Time for TF Tuned to put in new bushings - the only company with ready spares for Manitou of that vintage. So off came the Mattocs and on went some 150mm Rockshox soloair Pikes from the pile in the workshop. Very well used, with irritating top out evident after fitting - a known syndrome often cause by the neg-pos connecting port being blocked with grease. On well, that will have to wait for a bit. Dial in the air pressure and open up the compression damping and off we go. And that was a BIG surprise. Decent bump compliance - on a par with the Mattoc but less impressive than the Helm - but combined with vastly superior support and grip. Big grin. I know all the trails really well, and suddenly rubble-strewn corners which always worried me were no problem - just hack through at speed - berms were a joy, and flat corners no issue. This was night-and-day difference, not a subtle change. Same tyres, same stem, but much much faster and far more secure on the ground. Big hits? No problem.
All in all - each and any of these are good forks. But small performance differences seem to add up to very substantial steps in trail realities...and grin factor...
