Long time reader, first time thread starter. As dual 27.5 160mm frames have gotten a bit rarer to find I am looking at how to trim a mullet. This may come as sacrilege to the current hot neu trend of mullets, but you do you and I me. Thinking so far has been to raise the fork to its 180mm position but slap in a 20mm of spacer to reduce available travel (gotta love off the shelf stuff you can mod to your heart's content without buying parts) or to machine a new lower bearing seat extender. Frame I'm looking at takes an IS52. Machining the spaced-out lower cup won't be an issue and I've seen the cups used to correct geo between 27.5+ and 29 from some manufacturers and am taking a cue from those. Obviously easiest path would be respacing the fork and tuning the air spring accordingly, however that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best route. And to nip it in the bud before anyone brings it up, just running the fork at 180 to maintain geo looks like a bad idea in model space. At full bottom out the chainring is coming closer to the ground then I feel is safe. So who has experience on this?
I didn't read your post but I get my wife to trim my mullet, looks pretty good.
No experience either, but logic would seem to suggest that the lower cup spacer idea is best. If you get spacing equivalent to the 3/4" drop the axle height will experience, you should end up with the proper geo. You could leave the fork alone in that scenario. How might that place additional torque on the lower cup and frame during suspension action, though?
Wouldn't it be simpler to buy a Clash or Mach 6 and be done with it?
Machining the spacer seems like the funner of the two ideas, to me at least. I just wanted to test the waters and see if anyone else did and what they're experiencing was. As for why not buy a Pivot or Clash, it's a cost issue. I've pretty much everything but a frame at this point on hand, and stuff I want to use. Frame I'm looking at is about 300 less than the Clash and comes with a damper, so the true diff is closer to 6-700.
And thanks for the honest reply.
Oh, well then I totally understand that. This sounds like a cool project; post up some pics when you finish the build!
EDIT: PS, remember the spacer is going to take away some fork stem length at the top.
+18mm
https://production-privee.com/collections/components/products/hs-extens…
There it is. Knew someone had to have made one. Thanks for the help!
I am not someone who does 27.5", but I've done this for a customer on a hardtail Chromag Rootdown) to reduce the fork travel for bikepacking.
I reduced the travel from 150mm to 140mm, and used the Wolftooth lower cup extender.
Since Production Privee is making one in 18mm, I think that's probably the right way to achieve your desired outcome.
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