Monday, June 7, 2010

Suspension fork?

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.

4 comments:

  1. 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.

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  2. Those 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.

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  3. They were common in the 50's and are still around, as that bike looks pretty new.

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  4. Yup, 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.

    Aaron

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