I bought a Merida Big Trail 400 a few weeks ago, have since clocked up nearly 200km of riding on it. I love single trail and downhill, but have been doing a fair bit of XC just for fitness. The bike comes with santour 140mm XCR34’s. With 51mm offset Now that I am getting back into the rythm and getting my confidence up, I find the front end washes out a fair bit in hard corners.
I have a background in building race motorcycles and everything I feel in the handling tells me it’s the front forks underperforming. Back in the day I had a Giant STP with Fox Shocks and loved them, so my question is if I were to upgrade to Fox Shocks would I be better going a fox 34 or fox 36 with 150mm of travel, And should I consider 140mm with a 44mm offset? I have a decent understanding of rake and trail principles from motorcycle building but don’t see this mentioned a lot in MTBing
The end goal will be to throw 2.5 inch Maxis on it will I completely cook the geometry by moving to a 44mm offset? And should I look at the big trail 500 – 700 and stick to those components to upgrade? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Obligatory Picture for attention
by Ilovethetrees