My child wrecked their bike and bent the fork. The problem is, the fork seems to be essentially irreplaceable. I took it to the local bike shop, who contacted Jamis, the manufacturer, and discovered that not only are replacement forks not available, there’s no plan to make them available in the future. So I’m basically forced into the aftermarket for a replacement, which sucks but whatever.. THEN, I find that there’s basically nothing out there \[that I can find\] that’ll work due to the thickness of the tire.
It’s an Orange 24″ Jamis Komodo (\~2021) [https://www.jamisbikes.com/bikes/youth/9-12-years-old/komodo-24/](https://www.jamisbikes.com/bikes/youth/9-12-years-old/komodo-24/). It has a quick release axle, a disc brake mount, and a 2.8″ wide tire (using calipers it’s right around 70mm wide). It’s a unicrown fork (no shock) that’s 100mm wide from the axle all the way up. I’ve found some potential replacements on amazon that are air shocks with 100mm wide axle. All the measurements seem like it’ll work, except for one… they all seem to have a 75mm gap at the top of the fork where the tire would be, and that concerns me because that translates to \~2.5mm gap on either side of the tire, which seems too slim (I think).
So my questions:
Should I give up on keeping the 2.8″ tire and just get a new wheel with a thinner tire that’ll work with air shock forks I can find?
Should I try my luck at attempting to bend the 6061 Aluminum (and very likely fail)? I’ve read it’s not only notoriously difficult to bend, but that it’s really not recommended at all to try to bend an aluminum fork back, and that it’s tempered and brittle so very likely to break or be structurally compromised in the process.
Should I just get an Amazon shock fork and see if the close tire fit is really a problem or not?
Or does someone have another approach I could take to get the bike ridable again? We don’t really care what it looks like, “Frankenstein” bike is totally fine… just wanna be able to ride it.
Thanks for your help in advance…
by shake10861