Saracen Andes upgrade conundrum

[cornishretro]

Hello all, I am new to thisg whole retro bike stuff, but I grew up riding mountain bikes from the early 90s and loved tinkering with them. I found this on Facebay and although not my dream bike it has a way cool paint job. The paintwork on this bike is immaculate looks better than my much more recent modern bike.

Anyway the original Max fork is a complete shocker, and if it was 1995 I would probably be looking to get the latest fork of the era a Rock Shox Indy XC or something similar. Do you think this will work with this bike? Anything I should look out for when sourcing some, if indeed it it the right thing to do. If anyone has any other suggestions I willlady l isten to the wisdom of the crowd.

 

[ishaw]

Welcome.

Hopefully the following will help you find a better fork if you are looking for suspension.

First up, steerer. You'll need a fork with the same diameter steerer (probably 1 1/8 but could be 1 inch so measure the diameter of your current one). Length of it will need to be at least the same or longer as you don't have any spacers between the top of the headset and stem.

Travel is important for older bikes, too long and it will mess with the geometry so you'll want to work out the current forks travel if you can (might be challenging as they look to be compressed so I'd pull them to full travel and measure the distance between the bottom of the upper stanchion and the crown). While you are at it, measure the distance between the hub axle and bottom of the fork crown.

As you have canti brakes you'll need a fork with a mount on the brace for your brake cable.

On to the fork. If you are aiming at indy (quadra might also be an option for your bike), they are elastomer forks so you'll want to make sure that they haven't degraded or perished and provide good bounce (compression and rebound).

I'm sure you'll find plenty of options from folk on here who have forks to suit.

If I were you, I'd also upgrade the cranks, as they look low rent and heavy and you'll be able to find better which will also allow for ring replacement when yours wear out.

Good luck, I hope you find what you need.

 

[cornishretro]

Thanks, yeah definitely a 1 1/8 th steerer tube, looking at the numbers the original fork has a travel of about 40mm whearas the early Indy's have a travel of around 50-60mm. I think this is

I agree the chainset needs to be upgraded, but it shifts so smoothly at the moment, it's lower priority.

Thanks for the advice, I will start looking at suitable forks!