Looking for advice on upgrading the fork on my Marlin 8 Gen 3. Starting to feel like the 100mm is holding me back from really being able to trust the bike for jumps and rock gardens I’m encountering on my local red trails.
Was looking at this: https://www.bike-discount.de/en/rockshox-recon-silver-rl-29-solo-air-tapered
I think at that price its not insane to be looking at this instead of 1300+ on a whole new bike. One of my riding buddies has a Orbea Laufey with a 140mm fork standard and it just feels so much more competent.
I’ve read some stuff about straight and tapered and believe I’ll need an adaptor or something to make this work? Any help with that would be awesome. Also I understand that these forks aren’t compatible with QR wheels, how complex would it be to change my front wheel to thru-axle? Is it even possible without buying a whole new front wheel?
Any advice at all would be really appreciated.
by IWasUsingMyRealName
3 Comments
Yeah…. about that…. The single biggest limitation on the Marlin frame is the straight steerer tube. There is no adapter to make a tapered fork fit. You need to find a straight steerer fork. The best straight steerer QR fork is likely…Rockshox Judy or the like…which you already have. Your max is 120mm BTW.
It isn’t just the fork on the Laufey that is different, the frame itself has different angles and bigger tires.
The Trek model most similar to the Laufey is the Roscoe, which comes with a 140mm standard.
Trek recommends a max front travel of 120mm, anything more than this is likely to negatively affect handling and may increase pedal strikes.
I believe the head tube is 1 1/8” straight which means you’ll be very limited in fork options. 44mm straight head tubes can be made to fit a tapered steerer with a specialized headset with an external lower cup but I don’t think this will work on your bike (I could be wrong).
You also have to consider front axle spacing and you would need a new wheel or hub to convert to boost or TA.
I’d recommend enjoying what you’ve got as best as you can and saving for a new bike.
Despite what others are saying the frame will take a standard, readily available EC44 lower headset if you want to use a tapered fork. Trek even sells one listed specifically for the marlin.
Unfortunately the Marlin frame is an XC frame, no matter how much you upgrade it it’s not going to feel great in rock gardens or jumps.