top speed

Question
i have a question or two concerning my top speed and overall speed itself.i changed my 100 mm suspension fork to a 80 mm rigid fork on my mountain bike,and i also went from a 42 to a 44 on the crank set.while my mountain bike is noticably lighter my speed downhill,uphill and overall has slowed considerably, could you give me some insight on why my speed has slowed,could going to a 100 mm rigid fork help with my speed or can you offer any more suggestions? also i am still riding with a 8 speed chain would a 9 speed chain help.thanks

Answer
Hi Rodney,

The difference in the fork may be the problem with the slowness, maybe not. I would think the 44 on the crank would actually increase the speed, though possibly not enough to offset the fork difference. A 9 speed chain would probably not make enough difference to worry about.

The only thing that would make sense to me is that the angle of the bike has changed due to the difference in the length of the fork and therefore you are in a slightly different position which you are not quite as comfortable in and therefore you are not riding as fast. The 100 MM fixed fork will probably fix that and you will regain your lost speed.

Really based on your modifications a different rider may actually find the bike faster than it was before, much of that depends on rider style. You also may want to check your cassette. I found on one bike that It seeded I kept getting slightly slower in my errands, after a few months of slowing down I changed to a new chain, which did not help much, but hen someone asked me when was the last time I had changed the cassette and I could not remember so I dropped by the bike shop and picked up a new cassette, nothing fancy, cost about 25.00 for the mountain bike and took about 5 minutes to change, bike seemed like it was brand new and the speed increased by leaps and bounds.

Hope this helps

have a great day

Jerry