It is possible to mix the crowns with the different wheel sizes, but to run the flat and shorter offset crown with 29" wheels means you have to have a total headtube and head set length shorter than 124mm, which many current DH bikes do have.Īll forks use the same 37mm diameter lower leg, which is up 1mm from the previous Dorado and allowed Manitou to find their ideal balance of stiffness, weight savings and seal surface area to reduce friction, after testing many different diameters all the way up to 41mm. Whereas the flat crown, more intended for the 27.5" wheels, has a 47mm offset. The drop crown, more intended for the 29" wheels, has a 57mm offset. They all also have the same crown options. All Dorado models can fit both a 29" and 27.5" wheel into the same chassis with markings on the upper tubes acting as a guide for the minimum crown height for each wheel size. The Dorado range is split into the Pro, Expert and Comp, with many shared features between the three. A fender kit is also available that uses the same bolt on points on the dropouts. Their fore-aft stiffness is much greater than a conventional design, but when things get twisted up the inverted design yields much lower stiffness figures when pitted against a conventional fork, with its additional bridge between the lowers tying everything together.īoth lower legs are protected by the bolt on guards. That's something they say allows the riders to have a better steering accuracy while reducing rider fatigue.ĭiving deeper into that stiffness topic, torsional stiffness is something that inverted forks have always battled. So perhaps the first point to attack is, why upside down?Īccording to Manitou, going with an inverted design allowed them to create a fork with a blend of increased fore-aft stiffness and increased torsional compliance. While upside down forks might be much more popular in other two wheeled sports, they're not so prevalent in the MTB world. #Expert rating in farm to fork game proHaving just spent a bunch of time on a fair selection of the current crop of right side up DH forks, we jumped at the chance to get hold of the Pro and Expert models to dive into all the changes, and acronyms, for the new generation of Dorado as well as see how this icon of upside down compares on the trail. The new Dorado is available in Pro, Expert and Comp models, with that Pro model seeing the return of a carbon fiber chassis. In that time, it has also gained quite a cult of keen admirers out there for its touted on-trail performance, something easily visible in the comments when any other dual crown fork is mentioned in an article.įor 2021, Manitou sought to continue that heritage, primarily by keeping the inverted design, but they were keen to point out that this is about where the similarities end, with the new fork in all three of its guises seeing a bewildering number of updates, changes and improvements across the chassis, springs and dampers. I sure did, glued to the screen watching the freeride films of the early 2000s. So long that maybe a big proportion of riders out there have dreamed about owning one at some point in their riding life. The Manitou Dorado has been around for an astonishing two decades.
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