GOING FORKLESS

For ages, the telescopic fork had been viewed with distaste by engineers, citing numerous in-built shortcomings. The ‘tele’s’ predecessor, the girder fork in all its incarnations – pressed steel, tubular steel, friction damped, hydraulic damped et al – certainly had shortcomings as well, but they were relatively inexpensive to produce, quite strong, and easily repaired or refurbished. The ‘tele’ on the other hand, required precision machining or grinding of the fork tubes, matched to precision casting and/or machining for the sliders, and suffered the problem of stick-slip friction (or ‘stiction’) under heavy braking or side loads (especially when used on sidecar outfits). There were other issues concerned with geometric forces during the actual steering process that also rendered the concept less than 100% satisfactory. But there was no denying that the telescopic fork, especially the Norton Roadholder (itself modelled on the BMW design) was pretty good – so good in fact it changed little, and had few challengers, for several decades.

Those challengers eventually came mainly from Italy – Ceriani, Marzocchi, Focelli – and excellent they were too, albeit refinements on a well established theme. But one small Italian company, based at Rimini on the Adriatic coast and away from the major centre of Milan, was utterly convinced of the benefits of