Q: My bike is a 2008 Titus Racer X 29er. It has a Fox F32 29 3.9-inch-travel RLC fork, and it’s been awesome up to this point. Now, on slow-speed, tight, twisty turns, the front end feels like it is flexing, and its handling is very sluggish. Will changing the fork back to 3.1 inches of travel give noticeable handling performance gains, or should I just buck up and learn to be a better rider?
—Pat, who is looking for that old-bike ride
A: The Titus Racer X 29er was designed around a 3.9-inch-travel fork, even though the rear-end travel is fixed at 3.1 inches. The handling will certainly be quicker if you install the spacer to reduce your fork’s travel, but that might not be an all-good thing. This change will steepen the already steep head angle by about a degree and lower the bottom bracket. The 20-millimeter decrease of the stack height is probably too much for that bike.
It sounds like the issue might be in the setup of the bike. You mentioned that there is too much flex in the front end and that the handling is a little sluggish; try a shorter stem. If you purchased the bike directly from Titus, they probably supplied a stem that was 10 to 20 millimeters longer than what you needed for the size of your bike. (They were notorious for this.) If you can still make the fit work, try a shorter and stiffer stem first.
If you’re still not happy, you can buy smaller spacers directly from Fox to lower the front end. They sell them in 5-millimeter increments. You can contact Fox directly at (800) 369-7469.
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