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Wound Up Carbon Fork Ride Report

Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 23:16:42 -0700 (PDT) From: "Precision Tandems"

Subject: T@H Wound Up Carbon Fork Ride Report

Hope all of you had a great weekend and were able to get out and ride.

Just wanted to share something while it is very fresh in my mind. My first experience riding a Wound Up carbon fork equipped tandem was Sunday and I found it very enlightening. Having awakened too early for my own good (4:30 AM) and experiencing increasing alertness with each passing minute, I decided to install the Wound Up and Chris King headset on the chosen steed for the day, an aluminum Co-Motion Robusta. We were to do a local popular century.

As we headed out of town, the vibration dampening qualities of the straight leg carbon fiber fork were immediately apparent, something very perceptible having ridden the same bike chasing the local racers the day before.

Having ridden with some extreme efforts less than 24 hours previous, we rode many miles going through an extended warm-up before standing on a climb. The sensation experienced while standing was surprising. It can only be described as super stable and rock solid. We have all heard the term rock solid and I thought, yeah right. But.... ....it is the only term that comes to mind which accurately describes the sensation.

As we took our first three or four strokes, I thought this is rather strange and found myself wanting to stress the bike more with acceleration as it felt so much more solid and stable. We found standing to be much easier and more predictable. I assume we make steering corrections for technique errors and so forth when we normally stand but with this fork it seems they were truly minimized.

I can honestly say that as impressed as I am with the Wound Up on my Espresso, the positive effect of the carbon fork on the tandem far excels that experienced on the single bike. This is truly a tandem duty fork.... ....losing the weight taint so bad either.

Just sharing what turned out to be surprising objectivity.... ....all commercialism aside. Mark