Quadpussin’ it.
You might remember Jeff from the last post – he had a finely crafted replica of his favourite frame made in titanium. Well… It turns out he was so happy with the frame that he couldn’t resist taking me up on a special offer to compliment it with a Spanner Bike Quadpus fork!
Quadpus was the tongue in cheek name I gave to my four legged titanium fork as ‘SquidFork’ had already been taken 😉 It featured prominently on Haute Gravel and was praised by Singletrack’s Hannah for it’s fine comfort and handling.
Four legs good two legs bad.
Making a fork in titanium is a tricky business. The material is a touch on the springy side, which means a standard twin bladed design will be too flexy, unless you use plenty of metal, at which point it becomes rather heavy!
A popular approach is to go for a full on truss fork, using four blades for support, with the front two extending up and attaching to the steerer just below the stem. This approach needs the design to be finely matched to the headtube length, or to use a funky double ended headset to take up the slack. It’s stiff and forgiving in all the right places but can end up being just as heavy as an overbuilt twin bladed design.
It’s also restricted to a straight 1 1/8th” steerer tube, although the design itself is inherently stiffer so it doesn’t need any extra girth in the headset department.
Enter the Goldilocks design, here all four fork blades attach to an oversize crown that pops inside a standard tapered headtube. It’s as easy to fit as a standard fork and nearly as stiff as a full truss design, win-win!
Jeff certainly thinks it hits the spot.
Do they work? I’ll leave the last word to Jeff:
The forks are exactly what I had hoped for. Very accurate and quick steering. They take the shock out of most bumps and the bike feels very playful and fast compared to running a suspension fork.
Over my favourite 18 mile route, consisting of drovers roads, tarmac and a small amount of single track, my average speed was a mile an hour faster!
Rigid forks lovers will certainly be impressed by these. Huge thanks!
Roll up, roll up!
And as we say, you can’t say fairer that that! I do batches of forks throughout the year or you can order one along with a frame. Prices start from around £500 – £600, drop me a line if you’re interested!
