While these cross-country-rated offerings from Fox are slender-legged at 32mm, the 120mm versions aim to offer the greatest trail riding capability they can before moving up to the sturdier, heavier stanchions of the 34 series. And there’s plenty to love on these forks.
At the heart of the Fox’s adjustability is the CTD control. Standing for Climb Trail Descend, this is Fox’s attempt to not only simplify fork setup when you’re on the move, but also to marry in with the Fox rear shocks and adjustable seat-posts that share the same control index. Set fork, shock and post to one setting – say Trail – and, in theory, the whole bike will be optimised, well balanced and generally singing from the same song sheet.
Some people might view these three presets as a dumbing down of the adjustments for damping but, if you’re someone who wants to spend more time riding than faffing about with your suspension twiddlers, you’ll appreciate the pre-packaged simplicity greatly – though you should be aware that you do lose some flexibility when it comes to fine adjustments.
More often than not, when covering quickfire changes of terrain or when riding in groups that rarely pause to tweak their controls or even straighten their shorts, this fork has been left in Trail mode. On paper this is the middle ground, with enough freedom – via the Trail Adjust dial, a sub-setting that offers three strengths of compression damping while in (and only in) Trail Mode – for tuning that it can soak up most types of terrain.
It’s still worth taking advantage of the Descend mode when things do get a bit steeper and larger, and we did appreciate its impact-swallowing if rather over-active benefits. CTD works, and with only those three indexed clicks to choose from, there’s refreshingly little to scratch your head over.
One of the strengths of Fox forks is their usefully low-friction seals, and their consequent ability to soak up the small stuff. The smooth Kashima coating helps, and the result is a superb feel to the fork over just about every terrain size.
The fork is reasonably flexy, but with 32mm stanchions and a 29er reach this is almost inevitable, and our test fork was by no means out of control. It certainly can’t blight what is an otherwise top-notch front end with an action that’s superb from small, high-speed patter right up to big hits at speed. Every step of the way, even straight out of the box on new seals, the Float 29 inspires confidence and is a joy to ride with.
This article was originally published in Mountain Biking UK magazine, available on Apple Newsstand and Zinio.