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Three Manitou forks compared: a cross country shootout

I’ve been messing around with several different forks on my full suspension mountain bike for the past while and this writeup summarizes my take on the different forks. The three forks tested for this article were all Manitou products: a Black Super, a Black 80 SPV, a 100 Minute 2:00.

Keep in mind that this comparison was made with me doing the riding that I do, which is primarily cross country and cross country racing.

Background

My current full suspension bike is a 2004 Iron Horse Hollowpoint.

While not a pure thouroughbred cross country race machine, it does incredibly well on the rough chatter and the rocky, rooty single track that we have here in Virginia. The bike is a mixture of xc / trail and can take a fork between 80mm and 130mm.

The frame and all components were virtually identical, including tires and pressures; the forks are within .2lbs of each other. This ‘controlled’ environment allowed me to compare each fork against another on the same terrain without concern that component or frame selection were skewing the results.

Manitou Black Super

Travel: 100mm fixed
Damping: TPC with remote lockout, and TPC with stanchion mounted lockout.

The Black Super is billed as an xc fork and it uses Manitou’s TPC compression damping. With the remote lockout installed, the fork was either fully locked out or fully active, there were no other compression damping adjustments.

At the time, my basis for comparison was the Black 80 SPV that was on my hardtail. The first thing I noticed was that the difference in travel between the Black Super 100 and the 80 SPV felt significantly more than just 20mm. The Black Super felt almost bottomless to me and the fork moved through its travel with a good amount of cushiness. While these qualities made the fork quite fun on straight-line downhills, they were annoyingly power-zapping on anything that required pedalling.

I soon decided to try the stanchion mounted TPC-lockout because it had some level of compression damping adjustability as opposed to the on/off operation of the remote lockout.

While the new lockout did have some damping adjustment it still wasn’t enough to help the fork feel like an efficient pedaller. This was a problem because I found that during my regular riding, I rarely locked out the fork, with the exception of long / smooth climbs that I knew well. The lockout was never on in the singletrack and I found it difficult to use on unknown courses where I didn’t know when a downhill was going to follow a grunt climb. Many racers love remote lockout but I didn’t.

Nonetheless, the fork performed amazing on bomber runs. In cornering situations, I felt that it dived too much, something that made the bike feel twitchier in the turns. In addition, the diving made it difficult to pedal through rock gardens and technical roots because the front wheel would get ‘caught’ in low spots. If my speed was too low it was difficult for me to get out of them, something that threw my weight balance off. Also, I found that the fork dived under heavy braking.

It’s not a bad fork by any means. But from an xc race perspective I felt that the TPC platform took away from pedaling efficiency and I never felt comfortable with its cornering performance.

Black 80 SPV

Travel: 80mm fixed
Damping: SPV

After having a 100 mm fork, I was reluctant to go down in travel. However, I wanted to try out a platform-based fork and happened to have the Black 80 SPV on my hardtail. The Hollowpoint seems to be designed around a 100mm+ fork length, although the company did market an xc racing version that had an 80mm fork spec’d on it.

Keep in mind that the Black 80mm SPV fork has a slightly taller axle to crown height than a similar 80mm Skareb or SID. Results with this specific type of frame may vary when using a SID, Skareb or other 80mm XC specific fork.

The Hollowpoint is known for positioning the rider with a slight rearward weight bias but with the 80mm fork my position on the bike felt more neutral. The handling with the 80mm Black was definitely quicker than with the 100mm. It became a single track carver… Pure fun in the woods. Negotiating switchbacks was much easer. The quickness, however was a slight detriment when under fatigue; during those times it became slightly harder for me to control the bike.

SPV is always a compromise between pedaling efficiency and small bump compliance but from my perspective, I really like the way the fork helps the bike ride with the SPV on there. I felt that the bike climbed much better with the Black 80 and ripped through singletrack much better under power.

In corners I found that the SPV held the front end up and minimized dive, so I felt more comfortable in the corners than when I was using the Black Super. On higher speed sweeping corners, I did feel a little skitish sometimes, and never felt totally comfortable with drifting wheels.

On downhills, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I wasn’t totally jonesing for the extra travel. Sure on drop-offs where I’d land on the front wheel I missed it but, overall, it wasn’t bad. One thing I noticed, which I can’t figure out why is that I was able to loft the front end easier than with the longer-travel fork. This made some downhills faster where I’d actually loft off the edge instead rolling off.

In rock gardens under pedaling conditions, the 80 was awesome. It took enough edge off to make it rideable, but didn’t dive into the crevices as much as the 100mm. So it seemed to float over the tops of the rocks better. An early concern that I had about pedal strikes never materialized.

Manitou Minute 2

Travel: 100mm fixed
Damping: SPV

I needed to decide what fork was going to replace the Black 80 when it went back on the hardtail and, eventually, I opted for a Minute 2 with 100mm fixed travel. My reasoning was that any new bike I get would probaby be built around a 100mm fork. I knew that I liked the SPV better for xc so the Minute 2 with fixed 100mm travel seemed like the best compromise.

When I first put the Minute on I’d forgotten abou the increase in axle to crown length by going from an 80mm to a 100mm fork. My handlebars were now higher. The first ride was terrible. I couldn’t keep the front end down and climbing technical singletrack was a nightmare. Eventually, I did realize my mistake and lowered the bars to compensate for the increased AC length. Even then, keeping the front end down was harder compared to the 80mm fork.

The SPV worked just as well on the 100mm fork as it did on the 80mm one, and pedaling was significantly better compared to the 100mm Black Super. That being said, the Super felt like it had much more travel even though it and the Minute both have 100mm travel.

In corners the SPV kept the front end up well, especially compared to the Super. Compared with the 80mm fork, the increased AC height on the Minute served to stabilize the bike more under speed and it was here that I felt the Minute really shone over the Black 80 SPV. On sweeping corners it felt like the bike fell into the corners nicely and wasn’t as twitchy under speed. It seemed that I could hold a corner easier with the 100mm SPV than with the 80mm SPV option, even though I was able to initiate the lean easier with the 80mm fork.

It did take a little bit more body english to corner, but this was welcome under fatigue where it minized mistakes, especially when the 80mm fork tended to magnify my mistakes. In the rock gardens it suffered from some diving into crevases like the 100mm super but not nearly as bad.

Even though the two SPV forks have the ‘05 damper in them, there seems to be more range of adjustability with the 80mm SPV in the rebound. Manitou forks are notorious for having slow rebound and not allowing the ability to really speed it up. The 80mm seems to allow for a slightly faster rebound.

The one downside of the Minute Two is that the front end doesn’t loft as easily for me as it did with the 80mm fork. Maybe I just haven’t figured out the right weight transfer yet or maybe it is in the rebound adjustability?

Conclusions

I think the Minute 2: 100mm with SPV provides the best overall performance. From an xc perspective it pedals well, and the extra travel makes it nice for the ‘aggressive xc’ type terrain around my home. The neutral-feeling of the handling slows things down a little without being a detriment. In fact this is probably desireable over being too quick.

The Black Super was just too cushy in my opinion for xc racing. It did feel buttery smooth and felt like limitless travel, but not the best choice for lots of pedaling.

I was most surprised by how well the 80mm SPV worked. It made for a really fast singletracking machine. The loss of travel really didn’t seem to be that bad as well. The quick handling, while fun, got to be a handful in some situations, and caused for some twitchy cornering. However the front end lofting capabilities were welcome on downhills. Even though I opted for the 100mm Minute in the end, I’d have no qualms about going back to the 80 for certain courses.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.