Crest is a new name in mountain bike forks and might be the start of a disruption in mountain bike suspension.
Giant is the world’s largest mountain bike brand and possesses enormous manufacturing scale and industrial engineering resources. It produces many house brand components and has now expanded its manufacturing capability to suspension forks.
These new Crest forks are Giant’s attempt to scale its production competence even further and become less reliant on suppliers such as Fox, RockShox, DVO or SR Suntour.
Although Giant has not announced standalone pricing for the Crest, they should start appearing as components on the brand’s low- to mid-range mountain bikes soon.
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The Crest fork range will consist and 100- and 120mm travel lengths for both the 27.5- and 29-inch wheel size. Tyre clearances are rated at 2.6-inches wide for the 27.5 specification Crest and 2.4- for the 29er variant.
Designed with a chassis structured around 34mm stanchion tubes, there should be ample stiffness for technical terrain riding, and the axle standard is boost 110x15mm.
Compression can be adjusted between open, trail and a lock-out mode by turning a top dial and rebound adjustment is serviced by a 24-click dial at the bottom of the Crest’s fork leg.
Those riders who wish to make their Crest fork climb with greater efficiency can install a Giant aftermarket handlebar lock-out switch and if you desire to customise linearity, there are air-volume spacer tokens available, too.
An interesting design detail is the hollow fork arch, which could possibly become a mounting tube for a custom multi-tool, or fender/mudguard.
Rider mass limits are generous, at 136kg, and Giant has set service intervals of 50 hours for lower leg maintenance and 200 hours for damper rebuilds.
For Giant customers the potential advantage of this new Crest fork range would be even more competitive complete bike pricing from the Taiwanese brand.
As an industry, there will also be keen awareness around Giant’s strategy and execution with these in-house forks, something rival mountain bike companies have attempted – but never successfully executed.
With some of the most advanced industrial design and engineering systems in the entire bicycle industry, Giant could possibly start a suspension design and pricing revolution with its Crest range of forks.
