Manitou "The King"?

[Maxipedia]

Hello, dear knowledgeable people on Retrobike!

I was chatting with a good friend of mine the other night and we spoke suspension forks from back in the day. He said he vividly remembers that in 1995-1996 Manitou had a downhill fork called "The King" with 30 mm stanchions and legs that were very far apart from each other, but he can't seem to find it anywhere on the internet. We scrolled together through World Cup archives from those days but couldn't find anything. Of course, if you dare to write the word "downhill" in search engine window these days 14 pages worth of Aaron Gwin will pop up, geez!

Now, I remembered I had a 1997 Marin catalog somewhere, so I took it out and snapped some fast pictures with my phone. I guess it might be it. It's from the days when Marla Streb and Andrew Shandro rode for Marin, it's in raw finish, like my friend says he remembers it, but doesn't have the moniker "King" written anywhere. I guess it could've been a prototype. Looks similar to an EFC, but it's a triple clamp.

Pictures:

Do you know anything about this fork? Please reply here, if so.

Thanks a lot!
Mx

 

[Soulrider67]

That fork was never for sale

Hello, A friend of mine sent me this link and I personally built that fork and the other 35 of them. I worked with Manitou for 10 years, from 92-02' I was an R&D technician and worked with and pretty much created and assembled the Race Department.

As far as that fork. It was never for sale. Actually we got back "almost" every one of them. Seems you have one of the few that were not returned. I would recommend that you keep that fork as a show piece and not a rideable fork. That paticular fork had bolt on arch, brake mounts, clamps, etc. You can actually adjust the bushing play by tightening the arch bolts, a major flaw. I'm not sure if that fork got the update but it was also pre TPC and some of the forks actually got updated. If you have adjusters on the bottom of both sides of the fork you DID NOT get the update.
Here's some history, That is the fork we thought up the TPC damper with. We were in Mont Siant Anne, blowing up cartridges left and right during a world cup, pulling our hair out. We then though let's just leave the upper half of the shaft off the cartridge and just allow oil to flow up into the stanchion. Bam, Rebound worked and now we had no more pressure build up inside the cartridge which was the reason we were blowing up cartridges. Only problem was coming up with a spring that was double the spring rate so we could run it asymetrically. TPC was born the follow year and the X-Vert became one of the best DH forks on the market for it's time.

So needless to say that's a collectors item. In fact, that frame due to the longer links looks like Marla's race bike. Only a few of those were made too. How did you get it? Pretty cool piece of history you have there.

I actually wanted to call the fork the Trail King.

 

[Maxipedia]

Hello there!

I guess it's a little misunderstanding! I don't own such a frame or fork. I was talking to a good friend about bolt-on suspension forks and he mentioned that fork. We looked all night for pictures about it and couldn't find any. This morning I remembered I had this 1997 Marin catalog, so these are pictures taken with the phone from the catalog and just put here for reference.

Except your story, what amazes me most is how things work and how easy you can find the passionate people from back in the day.

You made my day! Thank you!
Mx

 

[PopsTrippin]

Hi bud... Any chance you can scan that catalogue and add it to the Archive please?

Cheers, Rich

 

[Maxipedia]

I kinda was about to, but somebody pointed out that in already is. Mine is in German, so it wouldn't help much. Here's the link that I got. If it's not okay, I'll put mine up, OK?

http://www.retrobike.co.uk/gallery2/v/M ... H.jpg.html

Cheers!
Mx