Carbon V Aluminium Rigid Forks

[soggz]

Hullo Guys, im rebuilding my 96 GT Pantera which originally came with chromolly (?) rigid forks.I ran it for years with a set of JUdys which have now had it and i want to return it to how i bought it.In 1996.
The frame was bull burnished and as you can imagine, it became white with corrosion ,so i have spent 25 hours so far with 2 polishing kits and 3 tubes of Autosolve to bring it back to its former shinyness (apart from a few little dings which i havnt polished out for memory sake.(happy rave day dings i call them...lol).
I am having some decals made for it in my own colours as i want it to be a custom one off if you like, but im not sure about the fork. Obviously, on such a lite frame (7005 aluminium) i want to keep the weight down, but cant decide on which material.
I dont want to go mental with blowing money on the fork, as there is still other components to buy and i am but a poor man.
I have looked on wiggle,chain reaction, e.t.c. and a good ali fork is around 60 to 100 quid, carbon is more expensive, but i have found a website called Carbon cycles (?) which sell a carbon fork for around the same price as an ali one.Are they any good or will it crack under pressure?
The bike hasnt got to be built right now as ,like us all, i am on a budget but would like help in this matter.Thank you in advance and happy riding.

 

[Charlieboy28]

Carbon cycles or Exotic are well regarded forks from what i know and get good reviews

http://www.muddymoles.org.uk/reviews/ex ... ork-review

supposedly made at the same factory as white bros, bontrager and probably many more.

I have a future project in mind for which im getting me some exotic forks

 

[feetabix]

Hi and welcome along!......superstar components do a reasonably priced and lovely carbon fork too.....

 

[soggz]

HI all, thanx...But...Superstar components didnt have any forks for sale...

 

[Charlieboy28]

The Exotic and Superstar forks are the same fork

as is white brothers and others
just branded differently

 

[soggz]

Thanx, they certainly look the dogs.Im sure they will make the bike feel 'livelier' too.
My Pantera has a 1 1/8 steerer, but what length should i go for? As I said before, i had a set of old judys on it before, so what should i require to keep the bike at the same angles(?).

 

[Charlieboy28]

I think that these are the shortest that they do

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/eXotic-Rigid- ... 2eb8534463

42.5 which equates to a 100mm travel fork i think, you might want to check the axle to crown measurement on the judys to see if you will get away with it, and maybe use a shorter stem to compensate for the slacker angles.

I cant find the v brake specific ones on the exotic website, so you might end up paying a little more though

 

[tintin40]

These are full carbon
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bi-King-2011- ... 718wt_1165

 

[Bob]

I've had the exotic one's for about 2 years, they've been on 3 different frames, can't fault them for the price, sensible weight (too light scares me!) the front wheel goes where I point it and they look good too

They're on my Corratec now, before this they were on my polished Avalanche (give you an idea of how they look on a chunky GT)

 

[chriscl]

Exotic aluminium fork (425mm A-C) on my Gary Fisher Singlespeed - really good fork for the money...