32

32" Fork Testing

I reverse engineered a commonly available 465mm axle-to-crown carbon fork to test compatibility with 32" wheels. I found that it clears a 32x2.4" tire comfortably, doubling the ERTRO standard for mountain bikes.


People trying to fit 32" wheels to their frames often look at rigid forks already on the market, but they often need short axle-to-crown lengths to make up for the larger diameter wheels. These forks usually aren't designed for large wheels, though.

One such fork is the CarbonCycles eXotic rigid MTB fork. CarbonCycles seems to be an OEM for MRP, Ritchey, and Carver. This is a lugged fork with a short aluminum crown and carbon blades, so I suspected it might clear 32" tires in the 465mm axle-to-crown variant.

I reached out to CarbonCycles and got rough measurements of the fork, along with photos, which I used to model it. I also modeled a 32x2.4" tire mounted on a rim. The tire has ~28.5mm of vertical space, and ~15.5mm of horizontal space—much more than the ERTRO standard of 8mm.

Of course, my model isn't completely accurate, and there is manufacturing variance, especially in tires. The best way to test tire clearance is to have a fork, wheel and tire in hand.