This homemade take on the Fox Podium adds features nobody else has thought of

While inverted forks have been around for a long time, in the past 12 months they've garnered more attention.

That could be down to the release of the Fox Podium or the rise of 32in-wheel bikes, which at this early stage of development favour inverted fork designs.

Featured on the Blues Bikes Tripping Balls bike I spotted at the Taipei International Cycle Show was an inverted fork, the Arata, built just for fun as a weekend project.

When Fox released the Podium fork last year, Evan, who works as an intermediary in Taiwan between brands and vendor partners, figured he might be able to create his own version.

In doing so, he added a few features nobody else has thought of.

From the bottom

Those with keen eyes will have spotted an off-centre axle in the CNC's aluminium dropouts. This means the front wheel sits on a regular 15mm axle, rather than the 20mm axle Fox specifies for the Podium.

The axle is held in a keyed insert concentrically to the dropout, enabling both the fork's offset and axle-to-crown height to be rider-adjustable.

This prototype offers between 44mm and 51mm offsets (with a few options in between), with around 6mm of potential ride-height adjustment. Evan has thought about offering it with a super-short 40-44mm offset, though.

On the brake side, there's a reinforcement plate built in, in order to protect the splines of the concentric axle insert under heavy braking.

The dropouts are mounted to 34mm lower legs, however the next version of the fork will come with 35mm lowers. This, in turn, should offer added stiffness, as well as enabling the upper tubes to be larger in diameter, which counterintuitively will enable them to be built lighter.

The lowers are protected by 3D-printed guards.

Moving on up

Towards the top, the 7000-series upper tubes are bonded into the CNC'd crown, which has neat cut-outs celebrating the Japanese manga robot Gundam.

A custom fender has been built, which pops into the steerer and is supported by additional blocks that key into the crown, by the upper tubes' junction.

Rather than build his own damper, Evan has whipped a GRIP2 damper out of a Fox fork and fitted it to his fork. In theory, he could drop any damper in there, and considered using a RockShox Charger.

On the air side, a simple homemade air spring is used. However, Evan showed me a prototype air spring he's developing.

This does away with volume spacers because instead there's an on-the-fly, dial-tuned air spring volume adjustment system – smart stuff.

This is very much a garage project – although Evan has access to a fairly big garage and some useful friends in the bike component manufacturing industry.

Don't expect to see this fork on a trail near you soon, though, unless you shred near Taichung.