I was walking down the sidewalk in Downtown crossing, when I realized that there was something very odd about this bike. I dragged my friend who I was shopping with across the road, and took some pictures.
I think it's supposed to be a shock absorbing fork....
It's a weird amalgam of BSO (replete with useless "features") and cruiser.
It reminds me, in some ways of the overcomplicated fork assemblies that I saw amongst Japanese porteur bikes (though, now that I look at the first photo in that entry, I regret being so focused on framing the downtube decal and rocketship fender that I neglected to get a bigger picture of what the whole fork assembly looked like) This blog photo gives a slightly better overall view but still doesn't quite describe what that suspension fork is supposed to do.
ReplyDeleteThose are called "Springer forks" and they have been around for a long time, probably one of the early designs for adding some flex up front.
ReplyDeleteThey were common in the 50's and are still around, as that bike looks pretty new.
ReplyDeleteYup, springer fork, been around since the late teens (last century) when they were introduced on motorcycles and shortly thereafter on bicycles. They actually do work to a point if you keep the pivots greased.
ReplyDeleteAaron