mtb - corroded front fork

[Cataboo]

The handles on my stainless steel cooking pots will usually fall off quickly - the rivets holding them are some other metal and will just corrode away. I've had stainless steel cups split down the side (even though they were stored on the bottom of a stainless steel water bottle.

I've had a msr dragonfly cooking stove fall apart at the welds from exposure to salt.


I'm not always great about rinsing off my kayaking gear quickly after a trip, and I don't always think "oh, let's rinse the stove!" when the stove hasn't actually gotten wet or been immersed.

Salt water is just nasty.

I'm sorry you need a new fork. Hopefully you can make the case that manitou should have had those drop outs painted and sealed so that they weren't so sensitive to salt corrosion and manitou will at least give you a discount on a new fork. It's retarded suggesting that anyone would ride a mountain bike without the front wheel seated correctly, 'cause most people enjoy living.

I know I rode my carbon road bike once maybe a week after a snow storm - and sponged my bike down aftwards, but my brake calipers are all pitted & corroded from that one exposure. Now I just ride on the trainer and don't take any bike I care about in those types of conditions.

[lph]

It's retarded suggesting that anyone would ride a mountain bike without the front wheel seated correctly, 'cause most people enjoy living.

Yeah, I could feel myself go all prickly at the suggestion that that's what I'd done... Really! I did learn something from going through life with one blue and one yellow front tooth, and thinking at the angstfilled teenager time that "my skull is broken and I don't have a face anymore".

[lph]

I have to buy a new fork, but the shop is giving me 20 % discount on a new, and cheaper fork. Manitou has not been involved.

According to the shop "Manitou couldn't take all riding conditions everywhere" into consideration, so my suggestion that designing a fork that is useless in winter is a bizarre thing to do fell flat. The shop apparently warns people against using these bikes in winter, so they're covered.

Agh. Makes we want to go all technophobic. Just make something that WORKS, dammit, don't mess around building something 40 grams lighter that can only be used half the year, if you don't sweat, in the high frigging desert.

Sorry. It just pisses me off when my everyday, ordinary, sensible use of a bike for transportation is somehow seen as a very strange and "special" thing to do.

Lesson learned: do not use magnesium ANYTHING on a salted road!

[OakLeaf]

Ugh. That's not only stupid, it's insulting.

They would never get away with that with a motorcycle - even though a large majority of motorcycles are only ever ridden in dry weather without salted roads, and even though in the USA they're mostly ridden for recreation and not transportation.

The only relevant differences IMO are that new moto forks cost more than new bici forks (of equivalent performance), and the riders are stereotypically more likely to be assertive.

I'd be furious.




ETA - I've actually owned two motorcycles that were poorly designed for wet weather riding. Both of the flaws were serious in their own way and could be bad for someone who didn't know about them ... but both could be easily and inexpensively fixed by drilling and/or enlarging drain holes.

[Cataboo]

is it a bike shop you use regularly or are attached to? Because I know you do your own bike work. I'd be insulted enough at that suggestion & response, that I would just take my business for the fork elsewhere.


Check out the US websites or the UK ones and see if you can get a better discount than 20% on a fork for the bike - and order your own (let me know if you can't get it delivered to Norway, you can use my address & I'll mail it on to you)

Mountain bike forks are expensive.

[lph]

I think maybe a question to Manitou is in order, pointing out that magnesium is maybe a mite fragile and should come with whopping huge warning labels in the North European market.

It's not a shop I like or use. Large sports chain. I'll check prices a bit and see if it's worth the effort to order a new fork somewhere else (thanks for the kind offer, Cat!). But I'm def taking the bike home to install the new fork myself rather than pay them to do so. I've given up on fixing the rear brake myself, but that goes instead to my favourite and very trusted lbs even if it means I have to wait some weeks because everybody else in town also has them as their favourite and trusted lbs and it's race season. I may have to pay a bit more, but head wrench will then tell me afterwards what he did and why, and they won't try to make me feel like a blithering idiot for having the temerity to ride a "lightweight bike meant for training, not commuting" in winter.

Oak: ah, but motorcycles have motors, just like cars! And cars, as we all know, are what you're meant to use out there!

Ok, I'm even pissing myself off here Time to go eat something and head home.

[lph]

Happy update! Head honcho of sports chain store in question has seen the photos, and agrees that the corrosion was really pretty bad. New solution - they have a fork or two knocking around with broken insides, so I can inherit the outers. Right colour too, so this is a great solution all round - I get a working fork, a broken part gets a new life. Perfect