Bright Racing Shocks Releases New SKUNK Fork

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Drawing heavily on the Pablo’s past with Fimoco Engineering, and the design evolutions of the now ten-year-old F949 project, the SKUNK blurs the contours of Trail forks, pushing them beyond existing technological and performance limits.

Available from 120 to 135mm of REAL travel, the SKUNK is all about the new school: having fun. The SKUNK is also a perfect racing piece, thanks to the presence of the ACAD cartridge. From the backcountry to the downcountry, and every trail in between, ther SKUNK will be your own, personal traction factory.

Why build an upside down fork where most others have failed? Simply because we believe this design is the most superior form factor for front suspension. We hand assemble and CNC each part in house and take maniacal care in assembly and our tolerances. Coupled with our deep experience in design and racing, we know in our bones this is the best.

Let's put it this way: how good were your grandmother's cookies, made with love, care, choice of the best ingredients, compared to those you can buy at the supermarket even at high figures? Here you are.

One of the many aspects underlying the Bright-RS operating philosophy, common to all our fork models, is that the concept of SAG becomes static, re-evaluated and reinterpreted, reducing it and introducing a dynamic operation, in the movements and that manages to express great sensitivity in the most extreme conditions.

Having a fork with 150mm of travel (typical of an all mountain bike) means immediately throwing away over 30mm of useful travel which is not effective on the vast majority of forks.

Bright-RS comes with the revamped 130mm SKUNK (+ approx. 20mm negative travel) to equip frames designed for 140-150mm travel. Thanks to the careful development work on the heart of this fork (the ACAD cartridge), the static ride height is reduced, thus referring to what we can call the dynamic ride height. That is the working area of the fork that starts more classically static and goes down to get to the middle. This dynamic portion is what really ensures tire contact with the ground.

Finally, Bright-RS uses what may seem as a shorter axle to crown (depending on travel), this is in order not to modify the geometry of the frame. Thanks to the anti-dive effect and the active ACAD cartridge, you can count on a greater active suspension which will keep your frame geometry in check (unlike a traditional suspension that will cause your bike to dive under load).

In summary, on the new SKUNK this effect is highlighted thanks to the new ACAD # 8 active cartridges that are about to be placed on the market. Hence the SKUNK with 120 and 130 mm travel to be installed on bikes with travel up to 140 mm.

A true Plug and Play, go now, don't worry, it's all there! The ACAD cartridge does the magic making the fork sustained on stronger impacts and in particularly bumpy sections and sensitive in slow and guided sections, as well as uphill. Same thing on steep slopes, where the SKUNK doesn't sink uncontrollably and "keeps you on your feet"!

Forget the main course and embark on a whole new experience. You will literally float on obstacles.

Over the last ten years of the 949, we have developed a new shape to our upper tubes to maximize stiffness. The 46mm OD carbon upper tubes now have a completely new profile, to ensure great rigidity and at the same time micro elastic behavior (better comfort and absorption of any type of stress to tire your hands) and steering precision by drastically reducing twisting.

Have you ever seen carbon chainstays of this size and made this way?

The design of the feet (machined from billet and subjected to rigorous design and testing criteria) has been expanded to ensure maximum performance.

The bushing system taken from motocross is now a trademark of every Bright-RS fork and works perfect in combination with the carbon fiber sliders. The deeper the fork sinks in its travel, the stiffer it becomes and invulnerable to any kind of roughness, giving you only true absorption, support and traction. The guide system has extremely tight construction tolerances and great importance is given to alignments, which guarantee a unique parallelism between the two legs of the fork.

Your braking at the limit will be more effective and characterized by great grip and support also for the new fork crown which incorporates the previous design but further improving the internal hollow CNC process and the grip area of the steering tube.

The lowers undergo a unique treatment, developed exclusively by Bright over the years:

grinding and then a lapping process developed and carried out internally and subsequent very thick hard oxide treatment on a micro-porous preparation (which will absorb oil while it works and become self-lubricating). No fork in the world used such a refined treatment.

Finally, the cable clamp has been integrated into the monocoque sheath, bypassing any kind of problem related to applied parts or not very resistant materials. Zero compromises.

A little bit about Pablo and the story of why SKUNK?

I was born on December 16, 1966, at 13:00 at the same time (at 13:00) the single HEY JOE was launched in England which would launch Jimi Hendrix and the whole history of Rock and Blues would change forever.

The Skunk fork was created for pure fun and has special characteristics, it has 130 mm of travel but corresponds to 150 mm.. and is very easy to handle and at the same time has the same Bright RS hydraulics that we use on the competition enduro forks. THEREFORE, we say Skunk is a riding trip. So I gave it the name of a powerful variety of cannabis (the Skunk, in fact) because when you try it it stays in your mind. the arrival of Jimi Hendrix opened up a world and he himself used a lot of Skunk (but not only…). So I wanted to tie the release of the new Skunk fork to the date Jimi started to become famous/iconic and also to the time of my birth.

Base technical data:

Fork model: SKUNK
Project generation: E-2023
Application: Down Country/Trail/All Mountain
wheel: 29”
Travel: 130 mm with reduced and active sag.
Designed in order to replace 150 mm travel according to frame correct geometries.
(see Bright Racing Shocks anti diving)

What you can decide in tuning:

travel 100-135
progression curve
anti bobbing

Stanchions diameter: 35 mm

Stanchions manufacturing: 7000 aeronautical grade alloy with artificial aging, grinding and manual lapping with diamond stone and covered with hard oxide at high thickness.

Outers diameter: 46 mm with special shape
Rotor diameter: 160 mm standard (203 optional) removable bracket. (March 2023 also 180 mm diameter).

Bushing guide system: