Wednesday, December 14, 2011

A Questionable Fork...

Leave it to the Chinese...
A guy posted on this Facebook, pictures of his spanking-new German A Kilo fork.
Now, as far as I know, the Kilo front suspension is one of the most sophisticated design ever to hit the shelves.
It looks like a jet fighter's landing strut.
But when I took a closer look at the fork, seems that the mounting is welded rather than machined from a single billet of aluminium.
What raised the alarm bells was the base of the trapezoid's multi-lined system. 
I compared this to the German A fork I knew and the differences were stark..


The China-made fork, note the welding on the base of the trapezoid multi-link
The real McCoy...
Someone's been really hardworking...
To the untrained eye, the German A Kilo fork looked identical.
What's missing: are the clean lines and seamless base on the multilink.
I guess that what you pay is what you get and in the case of the "China A Kilo" fork, you might want to think twice before getting hurt if the suspension fails...

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