DVO’s general manager JP dropped into the Dirt office along with “European Sales Dude” Troy Jungheim and a pair of their prototype Emerald DH forks. There’s still some work to be done before they hit the shops but DVO are confident that come the summer you’ll be able to get your hands on what they reckon will be the best forks on the market. Anyway, here’s JP answering some of our questions…and breaking the ace news that we’ll have an exclusive first test on these forks!
And here are some photos of the forks…
The lower fork brace on these particular forks is just made from plastic and not carbon, but shape wise the final product will be identical. For testing purposes DVO have been using hand-laid braces in order to check the stiffness gains of the design, but because they don’t look too pretty they made these plastic ones for photo purposes.
By the sounds of it though all DVO need to sort out is few external cosmetic details as JP reckoned the internals in these forks were ready to go. By keeping all the damping shim based these forks should be incredibly adjustable and we particularly like the fact that the coil negative spring preload is adjustable. This means that you should be able to get the exact feel that you want, no matter what your weight or riding style. Air is used for the positive spring, which helps with both adjustment and weight. The thing that ‘real’ riders will perhaps like most though is the oil bath design. Yes it’s lighter to use small quantities of oil in a cartridge, but if you want your forks to be as smooth as possible for as long as possible then you really can’t beat oil bath forks.
Anyway, that’s enough for now, cos after all only time is going to tell if these forks are going to be as good as DVO reckon they’re going to be. So, keep your eyes peeled to Dirt for the exclusive first test of these forks…
