Well Hivers in an effort to make the best of both worlds a few manufacturers and riders have turned to mullet mountain bikes are built with a larger front wheel for riding over bumps and smaller back wheel for faster spin up and traction. Most use larger wheels 29” up front and 27.5” in the rear is normal. So in prep for turning my very retro 80s small frame Kona Explosif into an e-bike, more of that another day.
With the Kona I’m going with a “Baby Mullet” 27.5” front and 26” rear. Should be a lot of fun, I’ve not done any bike mods for a while. Off comes my Retro 26” Pace carbon fibre/Magnesium Race forks. And it will give me a chance to get the Pace forks serviced, which is a job that’s been needed doing for a while as there is a small fluid leak from the damper for ages.
On goes an orange air shock 27.5 MTB fork,
The Fox decals are a bit of a cheat but they do look the part.
The head tube is a bit long but thread-less head tubes make cutting it to fit an easy job. New bearings and star washer complete the bits required so it’s an easy fit. All done in less than a hour well almost.
One small issue I didn’t account for was the post mount front brake on the air shocks. My Hope brakes on the Kona were IS mount do cause bit of an issue.
I looked for an adaptor at first and while there are plenty that allow post mount to be fitted to IS but adaptors going the other way are a bit more tricky to find. So the easy option in the end is to pick up a Hope post mount caliper and just change that over.
A Shimano MT500 27.5” front wheel.
Which is a bit more robust than a the weight weeny in me would usually go for, I had XTR carbon composite wheels on my Race Carbon Marin in the Philippines, and the full wheel set weigh about the same as the new front. Mind you the Marin was worth a lot than the e-bike well ever be.
Anyway as it will eventually have an e-bike conversion the extra kg will make little difference.The longer fork with a bigger wheel do change the geometry and stand over height a little but it has not really a big issue for the riding I’ll be doing. If I find the change in geometry is an issue than I anticipate I can always change to a ridged front fork which will bring it back in line.
The rear brake can stay the same till I get the 26” e-bike kit which might be sooner than later so Hivers watch this space.
I’m going to have to change the rear tyre as the weight of a e-bike and torque going through the e-bike motor will rip the Michelin X Country apart quite quickly and I’ll probably put a bigger rear brake rotor on too to help with stopping.
