Origin 8 Black Ops 29″er Carbon Fork: First Impressions
August 27th, 2008 by Guitar TedRecently Twenty Nine Inches started its testing of the Origin 8 Black Ops 29″er carbon fork, which we introduced to you here.
We decided upon the optional 430mm axle to crown fork. (Note: The Origin 8 spec says this fork is 420mm axle to crown, but we measured it out at 430mm. Additionally, this 29″er fork is also available in a 465mm axle to crown version.) The fork is well finished and looks sharp on the black steel frame we have it on. The install was no problem. It was time to hit the trail.
The fork performed very well. We have ridden a few carbon 29″er forks around here and the Origin 8 “short” version fork ranks right up there with the best. Nice feel out on the trail like a good carbon fork should feel off road. I’ll get into that more in a minute, but first, I have to mention an odd thing I experienced.
The first ride was the requisite “ride around the block” test ride. I noticed right off that I could dicsern every knobs contact with the pavement. A constant high frquency buzz that supposedly, carbon is good at muting. Not so the Origin 8 fork. At any rate, once off road the sensation disappears and no ill effects to my mits were felt afterwards.
Due to the forks shorter legs, I felt great steering precision and a nice braking feel. The axle could be seen traveling back towards you if you hit the front brake hard with the legs of the fork bending along their length as I’ve witnessed with other carbon forks. The fork didn’t have that “jack hammer” feeling on sharp edged trail obstacles like some steel forks of this length I have ridden. I thought the ride quality was pretty nice for a fork with legs this short.
As can be seen from the top picture, I have plenty of mud clearance at the fork crown on the Black Ops fork. The tire I am using here is a Schwalbe Racing Ralph.
For my take on what the shorter axle to crown and 43mm offset does to a suspension corrected frame, check out this post from my Experiment In Front End Geometry series.
We’ll be trying this fork out on another frame soon, so stay tuned for an update.
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I really like that you can run v brakes on this fork, I wish more companies kept v brake mounts on their forks and frames. Will you be testing them out?
Rob Y: We may, however the only bike in the stable at the moment that we could test the canti mounts with isn’t compatible with this short a fork. If something else turns up, we may try that, but at this time I’m afraid we won’t be doing this.
We do, however, have a suspension fork we will be introducing that also supports the cantilever brake user. Stay tuned for that and a possible linear pull brake set up on one of our test bikes soon.
Thanks for the info.
That would be the spinner 2nine eh? I have acquired a suspension fork for my linear pull setup (a WB BW1.0). I’m still interested in the spinner fork though. A local shop has their own line of frames, and they use a few of the spinner forks on their 26″ ATBs. I think they’re considering making a 29er frame, it would be interesting to hear some feed back on the spinner fork that I could pass on to them.
Rob Y: Bingo! You got it. We will be introducing the Spinner fork to ya’all later this week.
lol, do you always put your King headsets in upside down?
Oderus: ha ha! I was just thinking today about when someone would notice that. Actually, I only ever install this one that way. I have three others that are in the “correct” way.
I love when Professional review back up my point of view, I am interested in the “short” fork for winter, but i dont know if my bikes geometery can handle it,
I am also interested greatly (canti’s) in that Spinner, i have seen it out there, but so far its been “the white unicorn” of forks, i just pray its not Too heavy
I love the white crown, thanks for the write up GT
Best regards
jason
Where do you buy it?
Joe: You can get one of these at your local bike shop that deals with J&B Distributors.