- This air fork is $130.
You can get it on Amazon.
It's got compression and rebound damping
and I've used it before.
If you're 140 pounds and you ride cross country trails
this thing is gonna be fine.
But I wanna know how far we can really push this thing.
Recently, we went to Cane Creek's R&D lab
and they had a purpose-made fork smasher.
It allows them to raise a big weight over the fork
and smash it exactly the same each time and get a reading.
And that's what I wanna make today.
(inspirational music)
(upbeat music)
I know, not the most impressive technical drawing,
but it gets the point across.
So, here we have a heavy platform.
It has to be heavy for the sake of being heavy
because we're gonna use it for smashing.
Then we have these clamps that we can use
to hold a fork or other bike part in place.
And so they're gonna need to be mounted to the platform.
Then we need some sort of smasher,
a big weight that can drop
from the same height every single time,
to smash said bike part.
And then here you can see, in this particular case,
we will install our fork in it directly below the smasher.
I have to build a platform heavy enough
to mount this thing to.
(relaxed music) (wood scraping)
(relaxed music) (tool buzzing)
(relaxed music)
So we're gonna build the base and frame out of wood,
because that's what I know how to work with
and that's what I have.
But we're gonna fill it with concrete.
And then drill holes all the way through the concrete
to bolt everything to it.
(relaxed music)
(tool buzzing)
(relaxed music)
(tool buzzing)
(motivated music)
So this is the basin that we're gonna fill with concrete
but it's also gonna have a lot of things attached to it.
And so, the framing that's gonna hold our smasher,
I wanna build into it first
so we can also encase that in concrete.
It's not gonna be very serviceable,
but not gonna be expensive either.
(motivated music)
(concrete slopping)
(frame banging)
(drill buzzing)
(motivated music)
So the concrete set up overnight,
if I was worried at all about the structural integrity,
I wouldn't even be touching it right now.
It's just there for dead weight and to fill space.
In fact, you can see that the concrete doesn't quite make it
to the top of the box.
And so, I'm gonna fill in the rest with multipurpose sand,
we're gonna cap it off with some wood,
and then we're gonna start mounting things to it.
Sounds sketchy, but stick with me.
(wood tapping)
(relaxed music) (wood banging)
(drill buzzing)
So to make this strong enough to endure repeated smashing,
we're gonna have to attach these with through-bolts.
So, we're gonna actually clamp those vices
all the way through this base,
so that they can hopefully deal with all the smashing.
(relaxed music) (drill buzzing)
(vacuum buzzing)
(drill buzzing)
(relaxed country music)
(hammer tapping)
(wrench rasping)
(tool buzzing)
(relaxed country music)
So the plan is, pull this weight all the way up
and use this pin to keep the para cord in place,
pull the pin and then the weight smashes our fork.
Sounds great in theory.
But the fork is hovering so low on the platform
that it might in fact, flex,
hit the platform and then come back up.
And that's not what we want.
We want to give it enough room to fully bend.
And so I'm gonna have to raise these vices up
to make ends meet.
Also the reality of this big round 25 pound weight,
just free-falling, it's not good.
I don't wanna have to do drywall work.
And so we're gonna have to build some kind of enclosure
to keep it in place once it bounces off the fork.
Those are my main concerns and I think they're all solvable.
(relaxed rock music) (saw whining)
(staples thudding)
(tool buzzing)
(relaxed rock music)
So it's not quite the moment of truth,
but we're gonna see if the release mechanism works.
We pull this pin out,
and then hopefully this knot
will go through the lower pulley,
the weight will fall down and just smash into our platform
and not break it.
Hopefully this all doesn't get destroyed.
(metal pin clanging in slow motion)
I didn't consider that the split ring would just split.
(upbeat rock music)
(weight banging)
(can crunching)
Oh yeah. Smashed.
(upbeat rock music)
So this machine just needs some finishing touches.
It needs branding, warning labels.
And because it is for smashin' stuff,
it's called the Berm Peak Smeasher.
(upbeat rock music)
So the Berm Peak Smeasher is complete
and I've got this $130 fork you saw
at the beginning of the video.
Actually, I've got two of them,
because one of them is gonna go on a bike
and we're gonna test it on the trail.
But first, we're going to tear one down,
see what it's made of, and then put it in the smasher
and make sure the steerer tube is up to the task.
So let's put this on the stand,
drop the lowers and see what's inside of it.
Nothing amazingly crappy yet.
(relaxed funk music)
They've got like, transmission fluid or something in there.
So on the air spring side, there's a spring
and there's a bunch of heavy red oil.
It honestly doesn't look like very much could go wrong.
So far, I see like three different types of lubricant
on this fork, which is a good sign,
because they decided where each of them were gonna go.
(relaxed funk music)
My suspicions have been confirmed.
The chintziest part of this fork,
is without question, the damper.
The rest of it, it's really not that bad.
And if it proves to be durable,
this is pretty freaking impressive for $130.
And so, let's put this back together
and bring it to the smasher.
(relaxed funk music)
(wrench clicking)
(pump rattling)
So we've gone ahead and taken this 29-inch SUNTOUR fork
off the Kent Trouvaille.
There's a pretty big disparity in weight between these.
Our $130 Amazon air fork is two and a half pounds lighter
than the fork that came on the Kent Trouvaille.
And this fork regularly comes on $1,000 bikes.
And we also know that these SUNTOUR forks
are pretty damn safe,
because they start to bend before they snap.
The SUNTOUR fork has a steel steerer tube
and the baloney fork has an aluminum steerer tube.
So we are going to rig this SUNTOUR fork
up into the smasher, give it a smash,
and then see how our Amazon fork compares.
First we're gonna get the fork completely level.
Then we're gonna measure
how high the fork is sitting off of the mat,
so that we can take another measurement after the smash
and see what the permanent deformity is.
And now we smash it.
(weight crashing)
All right.
(dramatic music)
(weight crashing)
So, move this destructo-ball.
SUNTOUR, test number one,
permanent deformity of six millimeters.
Let's run it again.
(weight crashing)
(dramatic music)
(weight crashing)
(dramatic music)
(weight crashing)
So three runs through the Berm Peak Smeasher,
that SUNTOUR fork deformed 12 millimeters.
Kinda hurts,
but we're still gonna put bikes back on the trail.
And hopefully with this data,
we can find the fork that's best,
because we're gonna put this baloney fork in here
and see how it fares
against a tried and true cheap coil fork.
So before we do the test, I should say,
this is not an apples-to-apples comparison.
The baloney fork is longer, it has more travel.
And so, there's more leverage.
Yet, we don't care about those technicalities.
We care how it performs at a front impact.
And so let's give her a run.
Test two.
(energetic music)
(weight crashing)
(energetic music)
(weight crashing)
It's fair to say that the Berm Peak Smeasher
needs some modifications.
For one, this warning sticker
has two R's in the word "harm". That's a typo.
And we can modify it to give us more consistent results.
But with that said, we were able to run the same test
on two suspension forks and get similar results.
I think the only thing left to do is install...
So I had filmed a closing right then and there
with my conclusions,
but now that I'm looking at the footage in slow motion,
like you just did, I notice all the obvious problems here.
First of all, the fork deflects the weight when it hits,
but that's, to me, not the biggest problem.
The biggest problem is that it flexes
and hits into the smasher.
There's a limiting factor to how much it can bend.
And the result was that both forks performed very similarly.
Now it could be that they're close to the same strength
and that's why they perform similarly,
but more likely the platform of the smasher
just limited how much they could bend.
Now, although our data is wrought with problems,
we know more about this fork than we did before.
And so I'm definitely gonna put it on the Kent Trouvaille
and give it a proper trail test,
but not before I make some additional modifications
to the smasher.
Both of these suspension forks
can bend way more before they break.
And so on our second channel Berm Peak Express,
we will improve the smasher, run the test again
and then take this fork for a real trail test.
I hope you learned something today, I certainly did.
And if not,
I hope you at least found this video entertaining.
Thanks for riding with me today. And I'll see you next time.
(upbeat funky music)
(wrench clicking)