So, earlier in the year I was riding my Cross Country Trek Mountain Bike and noticed the forks gave way. This mean that I could no longer lock my suspension out or actually use suspension the way it’s meant to be – like reducing road and track vibration and generally absorbing shocks.

So, I took to searching online to find a supplier for the forks.

After inspecting the forks I found one of the names on it was, “SR” and “Suntour.” Knowing that, in terms of MTB forks, there’s really not that many brands that I know of besides Fox. So, I figured it must be a brand name.

After researching, I found Suntour appears to be a Japanese bicycle component manufacturer. Great, now I just needed to find the fork I needed.

SR Suntour Website

So, the SR Suntour website has a great product selector filter – So, I simply found I needed to select my wheel size and my bicycle’s intended use – And it returned my exact forks – Just minus the Trek OEM branding.

So, go figure, Trek and as I found out later, pretty much every sub-$600-$800 bicycle in Australia appears to also use the same brand of forks.

Great, so, I found the fork I need, now I just need to work out how I replace my forks. After watching a handful of videos on YouTube I figured I would be capable of replacing the forks if I get the right tools and support aids – Such as a stem cutting tube guide, new start insert, hacksaw and the appropriate tool for inserting the start nut and crown. Have I missed anything?

If you want a good video to watch, I found this one pretty helpful.

Ordering the Parts

So, I found Cycling Deal seemed to supply a fair few Suntour products and they had good access to the parts I needed – So, I’ll paste in my shopping list below. Thankfully, all this happened before COVID19 so when I was ordering the world wasn’t in shutdown mode.

Did I mention I had a budget also? Yes, bascially it was fix the bike so I can get a few more years life out of it – Hopefully another 4-5 years – As it’s already about 7 years old. I’m pretty good at maintaining my collection of bicycles.

So, the shopping list:

I purchased what I needed from Cycling Deal:

• Bike Bicycle Fork Star Nut Setting Installer Tool with 2 Free Star Nuts
• SR SUNTOUR Mountain Bike Disc Fork XCR 26″ 100mm
• Bicycle Road Mountain Bike Fork Steerer Cut Saw Guide

Tools I needed to complete the work was was a caliper, a small toolkit with sockets and allan keys – The type that you can normally pick up from SuperCheap Auto or Repco for about $80. I just use my car’s service tookit.

Mechpro Socket & Tool Set 74pc – MP201K-1

So, how did the install go, it went great – I got the swap over of the forks done in about 1 hour and finished within an hour and a half.

Some images of the service are below:

Would I recommend to the backyard bicycle mechanic or budding mechanical engineer to complete a fork change – Of course, just take it slow and do your research and you’ll get through it.