Suspension fork question

[FaustoCoppi]

I was wondering, is it possible, advisable, sensible to replace the rigid mk3 thru axle forks with a good pair of air suspension forks, on my Mk3 Nomad, no need for masses of travel but ability to  lock out would be. Any thoughts suggestions... this has been prompted by a recent ‘coming together’ of man and machine after hitting a tree root when bike came to an abrupt halt and I unfortunately continued my forwards momentum the result soft tissue coming into unprotected contact with stem tube cap.

[George Hetrick]

There's a discussion in http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=13422.0, where Dave Whittle says the MK3 (unlike the MK2), is not intended to take a suspension fork.

If the headtube is taller, that could complicate putting on suspension forks.  I bought a new old stock RockShox (spell?) XC32 100mm suspension fork for my Nomad size 590M about five years ago.  The steerer tube was uncut and it was a bit shorter than I wanted but I found most other forks that I looked at had a steerer tube that was even shorter.  If my headtube was longer, I would have had more frustration in the process of trying to fit a suspension fork.

The Mk3 doesn't take suspension forks at all, hardly anyone went with suspension forks.

I see the rear frame disc mount is in the same place and same type, not the newer flat mount and not on the left chainstay.  Some bikes now put it on the chainstay to reduce interference with rack mounts.

Flat mount limits rotor size, on the chainstay cable pull brakes can get water and dirt trapped in the cable outer.

One of the photos that shows the rear dropouts shows air holes into the tubing.  When I built up my Nomad, I applied Frame Saver to the insides of the frame although I suspected I really did not need it.  But with those air holes (intended to allow the air in the frame to stay at atmospheric pressure during welding) will allow water to get into the frame, that makes treating the inside of a frame more important.

The new Nomad frames are ED coated inside to prevent corrosion, the holes are necessary to make sure the excess ED coating drains when they are removed from the tank. Some people choose to seal these with Araldite when building up the bike, we can if you wish.

I have no desire to switch to through axle on any of my bikes.  But, when I built up my Titanium bike two years ago, the rear dropouts were attached to the frame with a couple small screws, one set of dropouts for 135mm conventional dropouts or I could have gotten dropouts for 142mm through axle instead.  (I got 135mm conventional.)  It looks like that option does not exist on the new Nomad, so the only through axle option would be the fork.

Yes we wanted to stick with Q/R for the rear, the main customer base for our Nomads still want Rohloff and Rohloff say the Q/R version of their hub still functions the best with the least issues.

Any other Q's just ask!

[FaustoCoppi]

Thank you, I think it’s probably a no then, the head tube is fairly tall and I have a a fair amount of spacer above, the chance of getting forks with sufficient steerer tube to accommodate us quite possibly unlikely in any event.