The most popular MTB fork you (probably) know nothing about

this is the SR Suntour xct T30 mountain bike suspension

fork

and this is its cousin, the xcm series together, these are the

most

popular

suspension

fork

s in the observable universe, they are also the suspension forks that people replace the

most

, In other words, people are breaking them. take off the bikes and replace them with better ones; However, there is more to both than meets the eye and today I am going to delve into the xct and xcm series and firstly tell you all about them. Where is it likely? To find these suspension forks, mountain bikes priced between $500 and $1,000, that's the entry level they usually spec with these N9s out of 10 times, you'll find one of these two forks on those bikes, even They are available at cheaper prices.

Bikes like the Kent TR Veil and Ozark Trail Ridge, which are available at Walmart, why are they so ubiquitous at a bike company's entry level? There is simply no other option that has a better combination of safety, durability, tolerance for neglect, performance and of course pricing, there really isn't even a second place, let's start with safety, well for a Fly by Night bike brand , safety may not be that important at all, but if you want to do business for more than a few years, you don't want your customers to get hurt. and you certainly don't want to get sued and given the fact that anything can break they make sure they break slowly and that's precisely what you want, you want a suspension fork to die a slow painful death where it curses you by talking .

Your sister, what you don't want is an instant catastrophic failure. Everything on this fork, from the top of the head tube to the bottom of the stanchions, is made of steel, more steel than is actually needed and it bends now that the bottoms are actually made of an alloy of stiffer aluminum, so when this fork fails, it will happen here slowly, but it sure takes a lot to achieve. Here's a video Kyle Warner took of a kid having too much fun. I say here to take it easy with this fork, but that's precisely what 12 and 14 year olds don't do despite that warning label.

They are actually tested to the same ISO 4210 standards as other suspension forks, so they can take a lot of abuse, how do they make it so strong for that price? They throw metal at him. No one has ever accused a Suntour fork of being light. That's why many people replace them. You can replace it with basically any air fork and save 2 pounds. total weight of your bike, but you can't make something durable and profitable without compensation, but they are also durable in other ways. In fact, I've used cheap suspension forks to the point of failure after just a few minutes of hard descending.

I've ridden much harder without a single fault and just as you can't guarantee that a beginner will take it easy on their Sunor Coil fork, you certainly can't guarantee that they'll get serviced, so let me. I ask him what he thinks the service interval is on a Suntour xc30. I do not

know

too. Different variations of this fork have been around since the mid-2000s and I'd venture to guess that maybe 5% of them have even been dismantled. It's easy to maintain, you can replace the seals and bushings on this fork in just a couple of minutes, but no one ever does it and if you leave it it tends to degrade and then stagnates almost indefinitely.

Beyond replacing these seals and bushings, all you have to do with this fork is clean: you drop the L-bases in, clean them, clean the springs, and then put new grease on them and put them back together. There's not much you have to do to maintain a coil fork overall, but safety, durability, and dropout tolerance are far from the only reasons manufacturers expect these forks so often. They are also available in a dizzying variety of configurations. Firstly, they are available in all different wheel sizes 275 29 2 6 24, but also hub widths. type of offset shaft and even straight and tapered head tubes, but it doesn't end there, they actually come with different spring types, so a bike company might put a heavier spring on a size large than on a small size, but there's more when compressing a suspension fork all the way is considered to have bottomed out, now the opposite is called a stop and if you've ever taken a jump with a cheap fork and it extends, sometimes it feels a little violent , almost like a slide hammer, a little

know

n fact inside of this rubber cylinder inside one of the springs, this is known as Rebound Rubber I don't know if that's the official term, but yes, they call it rebound rubber because as the spring compresses, it actually becomes a little narrower and it tightens around the rubber and slows down the extension of the fork, it's almost like a rebound. shock absorber that is really cheap and can never break, but if a manufacturer wants, they can specify an xct or XM fork with a rebound cartridge.

These can be purchased from the Sun Tour website and upgrade your own fork. It is a fixed rebound damper which cannot be done. Adjust it from the outside, it's just there, so you'll never know the fork has stains unless you physically test it or take it apart. This is not a feature that would really help sell a bike, as most consumers don't even do it. I know it's there so it's something a bike company would add to improve the fork and for a bike company these upgrades might only cost a couple of extra dollars and in the $700 to $1,000 range, You can spend an extra 10 or $15 to make the hairpin. biking is better but at the lowest prices every dollar counts and they have the cheapest ways with no options to make it work.

I don't have exact numbers, but I estimate that the big bike companies are paying less than $50 for these forks, and of course it goes up from there as you add things like shocks and lockouts. I've even tried some forks from Amazon and AliExpress and yes, for the money, they can be pretty light, have some impressive features, and even work well, but in my experience, performance degrades very quickly over time and quality can be inconsistent. and from a performance standpoint, these work. I have ridden far too many bikes with xct and xcm forks and I can say from experience that you are better off with one than without one if these are a great balance of performance and quality why do so many people remove them and replace them with better forks?

Well, because they are heavy and not very adjustable. A high-end suspension fork may cost you $1,000 or more, but you can get it. a pretty decent entry level air fork for $250 and you save 2 pounds with one of these, so a lot of consumers who buy entry level bikes and then upgrade want something where they can set the SAG, adjust the rebound damping, They want the weight. The savings and for them it's worth $250 for the upgrade, but in my opinion, on the list of upgrades you should do to an entry level bike, this is pretty low on the list on a bike like this GT, you're a lot better.

Upgrade the drivetrain, brakes, add a dropper post, and maybe even change the stem before spending $250+ on an air fork, but Sunor knows that these coil forks are the bare minimum and that many consumers will end up upgrading, so Let's lean on it. Suntour actually has an upgrade program - they'll give you a $100 discount on a newer, better Suntour fork if you're upgrading from an older Suntour fork, so one of the reasons a lot of people upgrade this fork is that Suntour actually It's by providing an incentive to do it and just like Shimano makes low and high end parts, Suntour makes suspension forks like this and then they also make magnesium air forks like the one Kyle Warner uses, so no matter what application or range price you are looking for.

They are going to have something that fits your needs and so are these high performance ones. No, of course not, they are heavy, don't have many features and aren't particularly beautiful, but they are safe. long lasting 1 2 3 and you can care for them like you would a phyllodendrine i.e. water it once every 2 months and of course they are very affordable and work quite well so they find their way onto more bikes than almost any other suspension fork in the world When researching this video, I was fascinated to find all the differences between cheap Suntour suspension forks.

This video is not sponsored by Suntour. I only say that because when I make videos with some type of brand people. They always accuse me of that, but no, I'm just interested in it and I want to spread the information. These forks get a lot of hate because they are on the cheaper bikes, but that gets a lot of people into mountain biking and when you consider the price the manufacturer is trying to hit and the type of people who are going to buy the bike. These do a lot of good in the world and are actually very well designed for what they are.

I wrote this article. why experts find it difficult to reach beginners, this article and many other articles written by some of the most interesting voices in mountain biking are available in my substack, not only that, but you will also get the video you just watched see 2 weeks before without Ads get interesting articles and initial videos, discussions and help me free myself from the algorithm on substack. I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into entry level Suntour coilover forks. I hope you learned something, and if you didn't, I hope you at least found this entertaining. thanks for joining me today and I'll see you next time, it's okay buddy, it's okay, it's going to be okay, Oscar, it's going to be okay, yeah, it's okay, stay away from the grease, please, it's okay, disaster .