Skip to main content

Marzocchi 320 LCR fork


Marzocchi has been off the boil with its forks for a number of years, but this marks a return to form, with a smooth and controlled unit best suited to aggressive riders.

It's not the lightest fork here, but it's usefully stiff and tracks well, and there's plenty of support from the progressive spring. It feels very sticky out of the box, but once the fork has loosened up, it's super-smooth and supple, with a good range of low speed compression adjustment available.

Our fork came with a bar-mounted lockout remote, which was a pain to fit but positive enough in use. We didn't find that we needed to reach for it too often however, with pedal bob well controlled.

The new Dynamic Bleed Cartridge is hard to upset and sucks up drops and repeated impacts well, with nicely subtle feedback. The 320 is definitely a fork that allows you to push harder than the travel numbers would suggest.

The only niggles we discovered during testing, apart from the break-in period, are a slightly fiddly and not very positive thru-axle system and the lack of a pre-fitted O-ring on the fork leg, which makes checking sag and overall travel use a pain.

Great performance once bedded in, but some small niggles prevent an even better score.

Weight 1790g
Offset 51 or 44mm
Axle to crown 530mm

Price 945$

Popular posts from this blog

Merida Big Nine 100

Wit the bikes swapped over, we head out on the same loop again, this time on the 29in Big Nine 100. Whereas the Big Seven was snappy off the line, the 29er takes a couple more pedal strokes to get up to speed. That said, once it's up there, it's easy to keep the big wheels rolling, allowing us to cover ground with ease. The fire road is at times a little rough, and the bigger wheels roll over the imperfections so we barely notice them.

Chromag HiFi 35 (50mm) stem

This is a seriously solid stem. Chromag use 5mm Allen bolts throughout, which makes it that bit easier to fit because you don’t have to swap tools. Once torqued up to the recommended 6-8Nm, it clamps both steerer and bar solidly, with no appreciable flex. We couldn’t get it to twist on the steerer, either in our static test or when riding. It’s also available in a 35mm length and three other colours. At 204g the HiFi is the heaviest stem on test by some margin, despite being one of the more expensive offerings here. Price $112

Cannondale Trail SL 29 SS

The fat aluminium tubes are a constrast to the skinny items seen elsewhere in the test, but this rigid Cannondale uses them to create one of the most old-school - and lightest - rides here.

CANYON NERVE AL 8.0

  S ince their entry into the UK market a few years ago, Canyon have made a name for themselves as purveyors of well-made bikes that exhibit often extraordinary value. The secret (or catch, depending on your point of view) is that the brand don’t have dealers – they ship bikes directly to your door.

Trek Session Evolution

In this series we’re looking at the evolution of three bikes that enjoy enduring popularity with UK riders. Each fits into a different category – we’ve had a hardtail and a full-suspension trail bike, so for this final feature it’s the turn of the long-travel bike. And few ‘big bikes’ have undergone such a transformation as the Trek Session, which had a bit of a confused birth at a time of overlapping disciplines but has evolved into a sleek, lightweight race bike with multiple World Cup wins to its name.