Formula 35 650B AM forks

Having ridden nothing but Fox forks on my last 3 bikes, it was a nice change to try out the new Formula 35 fork. Designed to be found on the new breed of All Mountain / Trail / #Enduro bikes.

I only had a good hour on the forks at a race in Bright, one of the first things I noticed was the steam-punk looking adjusters on the top right chamber, blow off valve adjuster, low speed compression dial and a lockout switch. Which formula call Satellite Switch Adjustment (S.S.A.)

Secondly there was the plain finish on the stanchions, these were kept nice and simple with hard  anodized 7000 series aluminium. Coming in at 1690gm (27.5”) these are very friendly on the weight wagon. This is kept down thanks to the Magnesium lowers.

Travel is adjustable from 120 – 160 for the 27.5” and 100 – 140 for the 29”, when adjusting the low speed compression, there were many turns of the adjuster to get the feel just right.

You could really feel this fork working at low speed over the exposed roots, then when up to speed the travel felt very plush and soaked up the many decent hits without a worry.

Due to the muddy sloppy conditions it was had to measure how well the fork tracked through the corners, although it did feel very stiff (thanks to the 15mm thru-axle), again with all the mud around the sanctions remained perfectly clean, there was no seepage from the seals to be seen either which surprised us due to the conditions we were racing in. We will have to more testing under dryer conditions.

At  first look, we didn’t manage to get into the nitty gritty of the whole fork due to time constraints as well as having the race face on.

Overall we were very impressed that such a solid fork could be so light and work so well.

contact: http://www.eightyonespices.com.au/