Over the past weeks I’ve been turning over the idea of setting up my old Muirwoods frame as a hack bike for the road, using a 9 speed block for the back and single chainring up front to give a reasonable but limited range of gearing to let me tow my son’s tag–along when needed.
My ideal was to have a rigid carbon fork on the fornt as a low maintenance weight saver with a bit of zing reducing flex built in and one of the first models on my list was the XRR SL Ti rigid carbon fork from DT Swiss (previously Pace).
But can I find them for love or money? Not a chance. Sure, Pace still list them on their website, looking lovely and desirable. But DT Swiss don’t mention them and a search on eBay or Wiggle or Chain Reaction or the web in general turns up precious little in the way of vendors.
I just can’t work out what’s happening as these are probably the best Pace / DT Swiss forks there are (there’s no seals to worry about for a start, as Dave pointed out…).
Reluctantly but probably for the best in terms of wallet health I’ve had to look elsewhere and turned up these EXotic Carbon forks from CarbonCycles which look suspiciously close to the Pace and On-one efforts but at £85 are a fraction of the cost. And they come in a range of crown to axle heights so I should be able to get what I need.
I haven’t tried them so usual caveats apply. But the look pretty much identical to the On-one and Pace carbon forks. Worth a punt would you say?
Rob says:
Try White Brothers carbon fork (Wiggle) I have them on my OnOne 29er.
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Posted on September 23, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Matt says:
Cheers Rob, I had overlooked the White Brother carbon forks.
They look pretty decent (if similar) to the ones I mention here but compared to the CarbonCycles forks they’re still £60 more expensive!
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Posted on September 25, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Jez says:
Hey there. I was rummaging in the shed last night and realised what a mountain of bits and pieces I have in there.
Anyway I found a brand new road cassette in there which you can have for your hack bike if you want it. Also I have some Pace forks and some rigid on-one steels forks doing nothing which I might be willing to pass on for a fee…
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Posted on September 25, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Jonjones13 says:
DT Swiss have apparently chopped them from their range (madness I know!) so there dies the death of the legendary Pace RC31, that’s what you get with selling your company out I guess….
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Posted on September 25, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Matt says:
Here’s a link to a discussion where some bloke from DT Swiss says they’re dropping the fork from their range, absolute madness if he’s really from DT…
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Posted on October 4, 2008 at 11:47 am
Matt says:
Thanks for the link Matt. What a shame the DT rigid fork is being dropped!
For me it’s always been on my list of kit to buy and I loved the graphics too.
Having said that, those Carbon Cycles ones look identical although I think the Pace ones were carbon wrapped titanium? Probably the same as On-one/White Brothers ones?
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Posted on October 6, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Daniel says:
Jez, I’d be really keen to purchase a Pace fork from you if you still have one. Please get in touch!
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Posted on June 17, 2009 at 9:49 am