TUNING FORK

Fox unveils the new 38; big brother to the 36, it promises to be bigger, burlier and better

The arrival of the 38 is one of mountain biking’s worst kept secrets — ridden by Richie Rude and splashed all over the internet, you didn’t need to be Alan Turing to predict the sequence from 36. Fox did manage to keep tight-lipped about the details though: a clever floating axle design, new compression valving, 160-180mm travel and a host of chassis changes. We’ll break the new fork down from the bottom up…

THE HUB

The Fox 38 gets standard 110x15mm dropout spacing, but because front hubs aren’t created equally, Fox has employed a floating axle mount to allow for better alignment of the lower legs – which in turn reduces friction. A floating spacer in the driveside dropout is adjusted to match the hub and it’s held in place with a pinch bold. And the real beauty of the design is that it is set-and-forget, so you still get all the advantages of the 15mm QR lever. The new floating axle will also feature on the latest 36 fork, and if you want to save weight and boost stiffness on the new 38 or 36, a dedicated Kobalt-X axle can be used to replace the floating sleeve and QR axle. Which makes it very similar to the floating axle system on the Ó¦hlins RFX 36 fork.

THE LOWERS