The most suitable Catalyst fork options for Adventure touring.
By Andy B - October 2006

The Catalyst has been designed to allow the use of an 80mm or 100mm travel suspension fork and V brakes.
As long as you either travel with the minimum of ultra-lightweight camping and cooking kit or, if you are traveling with more and/or heavier kit, you pull a (single wheel) trailer, the Catalyst is more than up to the great off-road cycling challenges of our time (such the Caraterra Austral in Chile, the “Great Divide” in the USA, the Himalayas, The Bi-centennial trail in Australia or, closer to home, the Alps, Pyrenees, Scotland or Wales).

The best fork for this purpose was the Fox Vanilla 80mm or 100mm travel coil fork. Unfortunately, Fox have decided, in their wisdom, that the Vanilla is to become a freeride fork… this market now demands 140+mm of travel. In order to make the best 140mm travel coil fork that they can, Fox have fitted longer springs and a longer damping unit… this means that the fork is no longer capable of being reduced in travel… it’s a big shame!

Fiona and I have traveled on many challenging off-road routes… if we didn’t already have our Vanilla forks and if our bank balances allowed, my first choice would be the FOX F100RLC (or F80 RLC) these are still made with V bosses (I’d never tour with disc brakes, even though lots of people manage a trouble-free trip, there are many who have their adventures ruined by the associated problems).
Mojo, who are Fox’s official guys in the UK, are genuine people… they have assured me that they have not had any air seal problems on the Float F series of fork…except one or two which would not hold air from the beginning, because of the seals being damaged during assembly… they say that their (considerable) experience is that, as long as it works properly when new, the Float is as reliable as the Vanilla. There is an appreciable weight saving (290g) with the F100RLC (over the Vanilla) much of which is negated, if you carry an air suspension pump… which I would do, on a ride of this length but not on a weekend adventure.

If our funds did not permit such an expensive fork, I would use the Magura Odur coil fork… this is available (with V bosses) in 85mm or 100mm travel and, whilst the performance is not quite as sweet as the Vanilla and it weighs 100g more, the fork has been made to provide the very low maintenance reliability demanded by the (huge) German and Swiss markets for commuting off-roaders.

There may well be other forks which are genuinely suitable for Adventure touring but I don’t know of them and my personal experience and observations, from 18 years in the cycle trade, is that there is a lot of over-hyped rubbish on the market, which won’t do a long-term job. I have spoken to people who are pleased with a fork that I know is junk, there are two possible reasons for these anomalies; the first is low customer expectation and the second is that poor quality can often be traced back to poor engineering tolerances, therefore some forks must accidentally be manufactured with all the tolerances perfect! This means that, the customer with low expectations, who owns a nasty fork which has been (accidentally) manufactured well, is likely to give you duff information.

I believe that some manufacturers may actually have special “magazine test” versions of their nasty forks… but that’s another story!

I hope that this helps you, have a great trip, where ever it is that you are going… the Catalyst will certainly exceed your expectations.

All the best,

Andy B