Looking for a 20” fork for my 6yr olds custom frame that I’m building and I can’t find anything except bmx forks. I’ve bought a bmx one and will probably use it worst case but seems like they are rather heavy and too much fork to crown clearance making they very tall.
I’ve found some mini bike or reincumbent forks but those are all 1” threaded - which I’m trying to avoid. But maybe that’s the best way? What are my headset and head tube ID options with a 1”?
Seems like the easiest deal is to get a suspension fork. But I would rather have it be stiff than spongy on a low end sus fork.
1" steerer is preferable for a kids bike. They don’t need the stiffness or weight of the 1-1/8" size. What else that means is open for discussion. You may need to design the frame around the A-C height and 35mm-ish of rake to use the BMX forks. OR If you’re confident in your work, you can probably make a fork that would be appropriately light.
Remember fork failures tend to be pretty bad. The first thing to hit the ground is the rider’s face or head.
BMX forks are designed for bruisers to crashing into jumps so, they are heavy and strong.
Check out BMX racing forks, rather than freestyle. These tend to be lighter/skinnier, especially for micro/mini sizes. You can even get some nifty carbon ones if you fancy it.
I agree in theory but the issue then is I’m constrained by lack of available to
buy headsets / headtubes. What a good 1” headset you would recommend and do I need to just use an appropriately sized steel pipe for the tube? I don’t see anyone selling less than 34mm ID head tubes.
1" headsets can go from really cheap stuff to Chris King at $150 or whatever. I have used FSA 1" headsets on some track bikes I built for kids and they were very nice and not particularly expensive.
Any framebuilder that’s been doing this for a while is probably trying to dump this stuff since no one wants bikes with 1" steerers any longer! Including me! I have a whole bunch of old columbus headtubes, if you want to message me directly, I’d send you one for price of shipping. I probably have a headset as well. If you’re not in the US it might take a while.
I had plans to modify a bmx one but then decided to test my luck with aliexpress, shipment is killer, total for one fork shipped to the US is $113 - should be here in 10 days.
One of my issues was steer tube length, I need something longer than 350mm and most BMX forks were not that long, I could have extended it but between that and welding a disc tab it would have turned it into more issues that I would like to avoid in my first mini bike build. Maybe I got crap, time will tell.
Edit: Are you in Oakland? I am in Vacaville, I can show it to you when it arrives!
I can recommend Omnium Forks. Used one to build a custom cargo bike, but it will also do its job for your use case. And if your child has grown up you can use the fork to build a cargo bike
I’ve a similar thing in my head and have so far found two: the omnium fork and this AliExpress carbon one.
My criteria was as low as 290 mm ATC and wide tire clearance.
Yes! Lets do it! I thought about using these but it says the weight is around 1.5kg which is similar to the BMX fork i’m using now - and similar ATC so I decided to just use my BMX fork
These have disc caliper mounts though so maybe I’ll keep that in mind if there’s an upgrade down the line Is that a 1" steerer?
It should be here in a week or so, I am following its tracking religiously and with a unhealthy amount of stress.
It should have a 1-1/8in steerer, straight, IS disc mounts and QR dropouts.
I didn’t know that Omnium was also selling forks, those have decent pricing as well, unfortunately they are all out of stock right now.
Unfortunately BMX uses odd standards, I originally wanted a TA fork but BMX uses a 20mm axle that is hard to find in normal wheels and most likely than not, no disc tab and the steerer are often shorter than I need, good for a kids bike but my head tube is longer than 350mm.
I will reach out once I have it here, we can meet in Benicia if you want to see it live
One thing to consider with the Omnium forks is they’re mostly 1-1/8 Threaded with a short steerer for an integrated headset. This is due to the linkage steering design. Below are pics of a QR Mini-Max fork which has a slightly longer steerer than the Cargo but still only 88mm. Weight is 830g, 60mm between the legs (2.0-2.1” tyre clearance), 295mm A-C.
The fork arrived, it’s very well made, paint is great if you like the grey, there seems to be two small stickers on each side, I haven’t tried to scratch them off but it seems doable, all holes are clear, the center hole (the one for a rack or fender mount) had some metal shavings still attached to it (and painted) but nothing that a small file didn’t remove.
Took 13 days to arrive from the day they shipped it.
The seller says it fits up to 2.1in tires, I have tried it with a Velocity Cliffhanger wheel and an Innova 2.125in tire and there is some space on both sides, it fits comfortably.
Steerer is 400mm as listed, the space between the stanchions where the tire sits is 60mm - that makes me think I can fit a 2.25in tire but not much more, the rims I am going to use should have a 25mm internal width. Tomorrow the wheelset should be here and I should be able to do some mockups with the actual wheels that I will be using
That looks good. Tapered 1-1/8 threadless? I realized that if I go this route I have to lose the brakes and the front tire for a disc one ideally - so sticking to the BMX fork for now since I have all the parts
And yes, this is disc only, there are others that are compatible with rim brakes but they are usually even narrower. You can always weld the studs for rim brakes.
