Intend Releases Its 'Regular' Blackline Ebonite Fork - Across the Pond Beaver
Everything is upside down for Intend as it has released its first 'regular' fork after building its reputation on inverted designs. We've seen this fork teased over the past few weeks on custom European builds and we can now announce full details of the 140-180mm travel Ebonite Blackline fork.
The first question out of anyone's mouth will surely be, 'why has Intend gone regular?' Well, as Cornelius Kapfinger, the engineer behind Intend, puts it in the press release, "An upside-down fork is not for everyone. The performance may be fantastic, but the design might not tick everyone's boxes." Or, put a bit more saltily, "The characteristic steering qualities [of an inverted fork] may save lots of strength and the braking stiffness may be on the highest level, but it is hard to beat a myth like lateral stiffness without a huge marketing budget or large OE-sales."
Details
Wheelsize 29“ only
Spring Air
Travel 140 – 180mm (internally adjustable via c-clips)
Axle 110x15
Max disc diameter 223mm
Offset 44mm
Stanchion diameter 35mm
External adjustments Lowspeed Compression, Lowspeed rebound
Spring adjustments Air pressure, automatic pressure adjustment between positive and negative air sping. Progression adjustable via volume spacer with 3 different setups
Weight 2280g
Price €1,659
More info intend-bc.com
Wheelsize 29“ only
Spring Air
Travel 140 – 180mm (internally adjustable via c-clips)
Axle 110x15
Max disc diameter 223mm
Offset 44mm
Stanchion diameter 35mm
External adjustments Lowspeed Compression, Lowspeed rebound
Spring adjustments Air pressure, automatic pressure adjustment between positive and negative air sping. Progression adjustable via volume spacer with 3 different setups
Weight 2280g
Price €1,659
More info intend-bc.com
Put simply, a regular fork is what most riders are used to and if you can't beat them, join them. Instead of moping about some riders not liking his designs, Cornelius set out to design a regular fork with all the performance characteristics of his inverted designs.
The result is the Blackline Ebonite fork. The key details here are 140-180mmm travel, which is internally adjustable via c-clips, 35mm stanchions and 29" wheels only. Cornelius says it's best to think of this fork as straddling the gap between the Fox 36 & 38 or the RockShox Lyrik & Zeb. He recommends it for everything from trail to freeride with or without electrical assistance.
The steerer tube of the Ebonite is made with double-wall thickness, 6mm at the crown and 3mm at the top 1 1/8" section to increase stiffness.
The air spring technology is the same as on the Intend models Flash and Edge with the positive and negative chamber filled simultaneously via a mutual valve. A volume spacer can be used to adjust the fork's progression by placing it in 3 different positions and changing the size of the positive chamber. As with all Intend forks, the Ebonite doesn’t use the usual x-ring as a seal but a pneumatic seal instead. Cornelius claims this unique feature reduces the friction within the air spring significantly and gives Intend forks a coil-like feel.
3 different progression tunes are possible via volume spacer.
The damping can be tuned via external low-speed compression and low-speed rebound adjusters and Cornelius has worked with the Ibis Fidlock Racing Team on the basic setup of the fork that should allow almost any rider to find their perfect tune.
The Ibis Fidlock Racing Team worked with Cornelius to establish the base tune of the fork. The silver edition is for sponsored riders only, it's black or bust for the rest of us.
Cornelius was aiming for maximum compatibility when it came to seals and lubrication so Fox Gold Oil is used for the lubrication of the casting, Motorex 2,5W for the damper and, last but not least, the dust seals are D35 SKF Seals just like the ones that are used in all RockShox forks all over the planet.
The fork undergoing, and passing, FBPE testing.
Some parts of the fork are now engineered in Asia, which helps bring the cost down.
The fork is only available in black and only for 29" wheels at the moment. Cornelius says you can still run it for a 27.5" bike but you should reduce the travel by 10mm from what you were running to keep the ride height within 10mm. The fork weighs 2,280 grams, which is 120 grams lighter than the Flash but the regular design does increase the unsprung mass. The fork is also €2-300 cheaper than Intend's inverted forks at €1,659.
More info, here.
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You can see it here at 6:09 (german video from the intend engineer)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL4HDZm6mZ4&feature=emb_title
It reduces manufacturing investment (clever approach), but I'm missing all conventional vs USD forks... never saw a moto market prefering conventional forks over USDs...
The hype train is so strong it won’t matter anyway.
Actually it is cost. There is a large initial cost to get a casting supply chain going. The reason Fox and SRAM don't use bolt-on arches anymore is because they can afford not too. And if the absolute stiffness of a one-piece casting is also large, then that's just a bonus and can be taken advantage of to save materials and weight, but it doesn't mean that a bolt-on system is automatically inferior.
Marzocchi stopped using them 20 years ago.
The intend fork doesn’t use a ‘mold’ it is cnc machined.
Do you have any idea of the cost of developing a casting of the complexity of the fork lowers? - Getting it right first time and the post cast machining to required tolerance?
I would guess it would come to more than the entire turnover of Intend as a company to develop the fox 38 lower to the point of production ready manufacture inc tooling.
Intend machine the fork as that’s what they can afford to do, they couldn’t dream of creating their own cast lower for their sales numbers.
Intend are using what they can afford, and what they can afford just isn’t as good as the single piece casting, basic engineering. It may be good enough, who knows?
Single crown forks are nice, but for Enduro or Ebikes, it would be nive to have triples in the region of 2500/2600grm.
This sentence doesn't make any sense, because the x-ring seal _is_ a pneumatic seal in this usage. It seals a pneumatic spring.
I mean, shit, lots of things just use an o-ring for a pneumatic seal.Does that mean that this fork just has a simple o-ring for the piston seal?
Lots of hype though and very little bitching about cost with intend stuff....
so you're saying actual performance doesn't matter, it's all about the marketing? my god where is this world headed, people obviously don't like their electricity and tap water
Lot's of cliches getting tossed around incorrectly in this PR piece. Drags down the whole thing.
It's an amazing fork and a good example of German engineering: it looks boombproof but it's so overcomplicated...
Regardless of that, beautiful fork!
Increase stiffness over what? Because every decent single-crown fork for at least a decade has had a thicker walled steerer at the crown.
Wonder if Cornelius will throw the Ti front axle and axle clamp bolt on it for a bit of trickness?
Lastly, we always discuss Intend chassis' but I never hear about the valving, which is what is most important.
Would like to see a review of say the Era, the Ebonite, the Mezzer & the Zeb as those are the 4 forks I'm interested in purchasing.
DT swiss continued them for a while after they purchased from Pace. Quite recent history.
Would be super interesting to see the difference. Sure the lowers are a bigger tube on this one, but they're also mostly empty, the walls are probably thinner, and they're shorter, than the stanchion. Add the arch in (BTW, is that bonded? Bolted on from the inside?) and even then it's still got to be pretty damn close. I have a feeling if it was a huge difference then we'd know exactly how much less the USD one is.
Shame . The inverted fork worked perfectly. Looked awesome.
But people all want the same thing. So he made the same fork as Rock shock and Fox.
The inverted fork is for people with imagination and innovation.
This fork is for the Sheeples.
Well, that's just straight up bullshit. Without at least HSR, and probably HCS for many people, a "perfect tune" for "any rider" is by definition not attainable. Yes, a good base tune will get really damn close for the average sized rider, but without being able to fully tune rebound to match the spring, it's not even close to "any rider".
Realistically, the only time you can talk about someone not riding hard enough to need damping is compression damping. Yes, the argumen could be made that if they're not riding hard enough to use the travel, yeah maybe end-stroke rebound control won't matter. But it is not hard to misjudge something and bottom out and need that damping.
It's no more confusing that the recommended PSI. There is a little chart, put in that PSI, set those rebound clickers, go ride. Adjust if you want, or not. Either way, know that you now have damping adjusted to match your spring.
It’s heavy, it’s expensive, so what.
They inverted fork was cooker, just needed some stanchion protectors.
So here it is