Father Christmas gave our eldest a 20" Specialized Riprock for Christmas. The bike is great and has already got him down a few blue runs in Sticky Forest and Hammys in Queenstown. The only thing I would like to change is the fork which seems to be a waste of time. It is the usual Suntour pretend suspension fork that moves only on the biggest hits and then trys to throw him off the bike on the undampened rebound.
The options I can find seem to be the RST F1RST and the seeming yet to be released RST Snyper. Both are air forks with rebound dampening. They are both 24" forks so the axle to crown measurement is about 430mm (at around 60-80mm travel). The current fork is 400mm but doesn't sag into the travel at all so I figure by the time I set a proper air fork up with the right amount of sag I'm only going to be increasing the height of the front end by around 10mm or so.
The other option that I've found is to use a 26" Rockshox SID and reduce the travel down to 60 or 80mm (Dual air only). The axle to crown measurement of these seems to be around 430mm as well. The problem is finding a secondhand one cheap. I thought there would be heaps of them floating about but not the case it seems.
So the question is, accepting I'm an over indulgent father, would increasing the height of the front end do to much harm and which of the options is likely to be best cost/return?
Cheers,
Chris