# My latest score... NOS MRC Shaka Ti Forks...



## DeeEight (Jan 13, 2004)

Got these two off ebay a couple weeks ago. They showed up today. 1995 model year, one completely rideable, one missing the brace assembly/brake stud hardware. Neither had top caps though either, probably have to use stem plugs or something, unless manitou 1/2 top caps fit.

Unthreaded Titanium 1" diameter steerer tubes... 2" travel, elastomer internals (manitou 1/2 style, short stacks at the bottom of each slider, without any form of preload adjustment) which actually seem to be perfect shape, once the things warmed up to room temperature they compressed fine. Oh and the weight... 1295 (2 Ibs 13.7oz) grams for the complete one. That's impressively damn light for the time period. Yeah I know the scale photo says 13.6, out of five weighings it did that once and I'm not sure why, probably how it was balanced.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with them... I was originally thinking i'd use the elastomers from the incomplete one to restore a manitou 1 to operational form, but that leaves me the complete one to ponder over. My only 1" steerer bike right now doesn't exactly need 260mm worth of steerer and it seems a shame to have to cut it down that much.


----------



## weps (Feb 2, 2006)

congrats on the deal. they sure look good! a fork a don't know too much about though. 

also, let me take a minute to mention your deore xt v dx write-up that i came across last night. not only did it answer every question i had, i wanted to nominate it for some type of FAQ hall of fame! thanks for taking the time on that one.


----------



## pipelock (Feb 23, 2006)

*Nice Forks! >>>*



DeeEight said:


> Got these two off ebay a couple weeks ago. They showed up today. 1995 model year, one completely rideable, one missing the brace assembly/brake stud hardware. Neither had top caps though either, probably have to use stem plugs or something, unless manitou 1/2 top caps fit.
> 
> Unthreaded Titanium 1" diameter steerer tubes... 2" travel, elastomer internals (manitou 1/2 style, short stacks at the bottom of each slider, without any form of preload adjustment) which actually seem to be perfect shape, once the things warmed up to room temperature they compressed fine. Oh and the weight... 1295 (2 Ibs 13.7oz) grams for the complete one. That's impressively damn light for the time period. Yeah I know the scale photo says 13.6, out of five weighings it did that once and I'm not sure why, probably how it was balanced.
> 
> Now I just have to figure out what to do with them... I was originally thinking i'd use the elastomers from the incomplete one to restore a manitou 1 to operational form, but that leaves me the complete one to ponder over. My only 1" steerer bike right now doesn't exactly need 260mm worth of steerer and it seems a shame to have to cut it down that much.


I don't know much about the history on these but I must say there is some serious craftmanship that went into these. If you don't have a project that will work now, I am sure you will find something eventually. Nice score. These could be used as a display on a wall for now.

Could you link me to your XT vs. DX review?


----------



## Veloculture (Dec 18, 2005)

pipelock said:


> I don't know much about the history on these but I must say there is some serious craftmanship that went into these. If you don't have a project that will work now, I am sure you will find something eventually. Nice score. These could be used as a display on a wall for now.
> 
> Could you link me to your XT vs. DX review?


serious craftmanship? hmmmm........no, it's just the oposite.

McMahon dreamed things up and them immediatly put them on the market with little to no testing. I was sponsored by McMahon and the Shaka Zulu fork ended my racing career and could have easily killed me. ended up with a not so plesant trip off the mountain in a helicopter.

it was found out (by my lawyers and experts) that there was no top out in these forks. at about 40mph the tire bottomed out into the crown and stopped the front wheel cold. the thing is McMahon was sued more times than he could count. thats why he the company kept changing names and why he's out of business today. no insurance company will touch him with a 10 foot pole. i guess he was an OK guy in person and he had good machining skills but his products were dangerous.


----------



## pipelock (Feb 23, 2006)

*Whoah...not good, display option ....*



Veloculture said:


> serious craftmanship? hmmmm........no, it's just the oposite.
> 
> McMahon dreamed things up and them immediatly put them on the market with little to no testing. I was sponsored by McMahon and the Shaka Zulu fork ended my racing career and could have easily killed me. ended up with a not so plesant trip off the mountain in a helicopter.
> 
> it was found out (by my lawyers and experts) that there was no top out in these forks. at about 40mph the tire bottomed out into the crown and stopped the front wheel cold. the thing is McMahon was sued more times than he could count. thats why he the company kept changing names and why he's out of business today. no insurance company will touch him with a 10 foot pole. i guess he was an OK guy in person and he had good machining skills but his products were dangerous.


may be the best option.

Regards,

Rob


----------



## Veloculture (Dec 18, 2005)

pipelock said:


> may be the best option.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rob


yup, thats about it.


----------



## DeeEight (Jan 13, 2004)

Not that I'm planning to ever race them, if and when I use them, but how exactly would a lack of a top-out bumper in the fork cause the tire to contact the crown?!

Top out bumpers are for when the fork legs extend on the rebound stroke, to prevent the clunking noise of the bolts that are usually used to hold the legs together, as they make metal to metal contact inside the slider and stanchions. Bottom out bumpers are what prevents the fork from compressing too far, and Manitou didn't run them either on the M1/M2s as they used the length of the main elastomer stack to control how much travel you got. 

The Shaka's I have are the same short-bumper stack fork design as the early manitou forks. The only reason you'd ever get a tire to touch these crowns is running a really fat/tall tire in the thing. The Shaka Zulu's as I recall were a 3" travel version, Ti springs with oil-damping. 

Anyways, I'm still trying to figure out how to dismantle these things...they don't seem to use the same 5mm allen head bolts like Manitous did. In fact, peering down the stanchions with a high powered light, I can't make out ANY bolt head details to explain how you seperate the sliders from the stanchions.


----------



## Veloculture (Dec 18, 2005)

i meant to say bottom out. there was nothing to keep the travel from going too far. the experts found that the fork bottomed out with only 225lbs with the tire hitting the crown at that point. i was 145lbs when that happened so really it was very easy to get the tire to hit the crown with a good sized bump.


----------



## DeeEight (Jan 13, 2004)

Ever dismantle a regular shaka fork? I wonder if the genius machinist threaded the dropouts in the bottom of the sliders or something equally bizarre.


----------



## Veloculture (Dec 18, 2005)

DeeEight said:


> Ever dismantle a regular shaka fork? I wonder if the genius machinist threaded the dropouts in the bottom of the sliders or something equally bizarre.


na, never pulled one apart. i didn't have my Shaka Zulu fork long enough to need any kind of re-builds. unfortunately that fork was just starting to feel broken in when that problem happened.


----------



## banks (Feb 2, 2004)

They look like the early Tange sussy fork!


----------



## -Anomie- (Jan 16, 2005)

Gawd, just looking at those things is going to give me nightmares  . I never had an experience like Sky's, but you wouldn't catch me even riding with someone else using an MRC fork, much less on one myself. They look great hanging on the wall though!


----------



## toiletsnake (Jan 23, 2006)

*They look very similar to...*

Anti-Gravity forks. They were maybe around for a couple of years. I had a '93. It didn't ride very well. Very light though.


----------



## DeeEight (Jan 13, 2004)

AG's were made by Tange as I recall, and based on the Tange designs.


----------



## DeeEight (Jan 13, 2004)

I just got the incomplete ones apart. Turns out the bolts are a 6mm allen head (as opposed to manitou's 5mm) and I needed to rig up a lot of extensions on my socket set to get them out. And well... I think veloculture's right about the dude being a moron. In fact, he's a complete moron.

The old rule of thumb, which EVERY other elastomer fork maker seemed to understand was that good condition elastomers could compress up to 50% of their original length. So if your fork didn't have secondary bottom-out elastomers (as say the later Manitou 3s adopted when they went to a long-elastomer stack configuration), then you could easily determine your maximum fork travel, and thus how much tire to bottom of crown clearance you'd need by just taking the elastomer stack length and divide by 2. 

Manitou 1s and 2s had 3.75" of elastomer, so the max travel you'd ever get would be 1.9". And guess what.... that works out good. I have only ever ONCE bottomed the crown of a Manitou 1 out on the tire, and that was using a rather wide front tire (wider casings are also taller). In that case I think it was a Ritchey Z-Max 2.35. That's why many forks have warning stickers on 'em, or instructions in the manual as to the maximum tire width to use in them. 

What's that got to do with this Shaka fork? Well they were claimed to get 2" of travel... and the amount of exposed stanchion showing between the top of the sliders and the bottom of the crown is 59mm, so 8mm more than what 2" of travel would be. Except...there's more than 4" of elastomers. There is in fact, just over 4.5" of elastomers. So in other words, the thing is relying on the legs hitting the crown as the limit on the travel. Oh... and as to a tire in the fork... I measured a 2.2 Joe Murray Maximum as having only 52mm of clearance to the underside of the crown. One of the schwalbe tires I measured would have had about 5mm more clearance, and it was rated a 2.1 but fortunetly it isn't really. I'm thinking anything more than a 1.95 in this thing is a recipe for disaster. At least at high speeds. At low speeds and depending on tire lug profile it should just be a buzzing noise. At least the elastomers in it seemed fairly stiff.


----------



## Dr Thunder (Nov 18, 2005)

*Seals on those are notoriously bad*

Supposedly they manage to be fairly stiction-y (a word?) and yet also quickly let in a lot of crap that gums up the action. Not that I've ridden them, just the word from an older magazine article (though I did have a pair of MRC Ti barends and a Ti seatpost in the late 90s).

By the way, Sky, what other names did MRC operate under?


----------



## Veloculture (Dec 18, 2005)

Dr Thunder said:


> Supposedly they manage to be fairly stiction-y (a word?) and yet also quickly let in a lot of crap that gums up the action. Not that I've ridden them, just the word from an older magazine article (though I did have a pair of MRC Ti barends and a Ti seatpost in the late 90s).
> 
> By the way, Sky, what other names did MRC operate under?


geez, your going to try and trust my memory huh.....

well, there was McMahon Adhesion Company (i have one of these bikes), McMahon Components (i think), and the last one was McMahon Racing Component. i believe there might have one more but i'm not sure.


----------



## Fatmikeynyc (Jun 20, 2005)

*McMahon*

Hey Sky,

2 questions for you:

Did you see my "new" McMahon rigid Ti bike in a thread started yesterday? Do I need to be worried about riding that frame or fork? I don't plan on doing any hammering on it and I still weigh like 145 

Next question, do you have a larger copy of your Avatar? I always wanted a copy of that "Hand Made by Tom Ritchey" decal...

Thanks!

Michael-NYC


----------



## dick (Dec 13, 2006)

Fatmikeynyc said:


> Hey Sky,
> Did you see my "new" McMahon rigid Ti bike in a thread started yesterday? Do I need to be worried about riding that frame or fork? I don't plan on doing any hammering on it and I still weigh like 145


Sky is at Burning Man. All MRC products were underengineered, but only the suspension fork was outright dangerous.



> Next question, do you have a larger copy of your Avatar? I always wanted a copy of that "Hand Made by Tom Ritchey" decal...


Avatar is of the 'handcrafted' decal which adorned countless plebian TIGed frames.


----------



## Fatmikeynyc (Jun 20, 2005)

Thanks for the reply Dick! I won't worry about my MRC bike now. :thumbsup: 

I guess I'll have to keep looking for that "Hand Made By Tom Ritchey" graphic...Just think it's a cool image.


----------



## arcdesigns (Jul 24, 2007)

I ended up getting these from DeeEight in the Classifieds. 

Unfortunately I am just reading this thread now as I have taken one apart to re-lube and install for a ride this weekend and was hoping to get some tips.

"Ride at risk of death" was not the tip I was looking for.

Thanks DeeEight for the disclosure.

Anyhow, please find the attached pic of the fork in an exploded view.

If the issue is a potential over-compression of the elastomer pucks leading to bottoming out could I replace two of the pucks with a non compressing material and be able to ride a safe 1" travel fork?

As I am not they type of guy to hang bike parts on the wall and I could never sell these knowing what I know now my only real choice is to try to get them safe.

Any and all input would be greatly appreciated.


----------



## arcdesigns (Jul 24, 2007)

edit


----------



## DeeEight (Jan 13, 2004)

SIGH.... once again.... THE SHAKA FORK NEVER HAD A FATAL RISK OF OVER COMPRESSION !!! ITS A SHORT BUMPER STACK FORK. THE FORK THAT VELOCULTURE CRASHED ON WAS A SHAKA ZULU FORK, A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MODEL, WITH A LONG BUMPER STACK. 

As I pointed out before though, the chances of hitting the tire on the crown depends on the tire just the same as Manitou 1s and nobody ever called them death traps (even though Manitou had MORE crown recalls than any other fork maker in the 90s) and actually weighing enough to compress those rather stiff elastomers fully. I'm 180 Ibs+ and I couldn't get the fork to compress more than an inch with all my weight on it. I've bottomed Manitou 1s using too wide/tall of tires in the fork and I didn't blame that on poor design. I knew wider tires are taller and it was my own damn fault for running too soft an elastomer stack for my weight and too fat a tire.


----------



## arcdesigns (Jul 24, 2007)

DeeEight said:


> SIGH.... once again....


Hi DeeEight,

Great to hear from you.

My only concern is having a safe fork. Although the "SIGH....once again...." opening is tempting I will put that aside to acheive that end.

Based on your experience do you think the fork is safe to ride as is (providing I run no larger than a 1.95) or do I need to make modifications?

I am a fairly handy guy so if modifications are called for then I am up for it. As you have clearly been taking your gear apart for a long time I call on you for any ideas.

Thanks, Neil

P.S. I have already converted one of the forks to a 1 1/8" steerer tube and achieved a perfect lock with a Chris King crown race.


----------



## DeeEight (Jan 13, 2004)

You could probably run a wider tire if its one with lower tread knobs (like a Schwalbe Racing Ralph or a Kenda Small Block 8). I simply measured the clearance with what I had for chunky tires. As covered in a post about the elastomers a few months ago, 4.5" maxes out at 2.25" travel.... mind you that's in theory! Its RARE for any elastomer to compress to the full 50% (which is why Manitou's were often listed as 1.6" travel forks). If you wanna permanently limit the travel then take a band saw or exacto knife to the elastomers, trim them down a bit and replace the missing elastomer with a solid plastic spacer or extra washers. Getting back to tires, you can often see a 3mm or so difference in knob heights for the same tire brand, and same nominal size across different models. I just checked clearances on the fork braces of a bunch of my Noleen MegaAir forks (I have a half dozen of them) with some of the different tires and a Hutchinson Scorpion Elite Gold 2.0 was 3mm lower in top-dead-center knob height than a Hutchinson Mosquito AirLite 2.0. 

If I had NOT sold it, it would right now be on a Specialized Hardrock Ultra for my friend isabelle as she craves pink stuff and its one of the only forks I can think of to ever get pink decals, and in a 1" steerer size, and its sprung stiff enough for her weight (she's heavier than I am).


----------



## arcdesigns (Jul 24, 2007)

DeeEight said:


> You could probably run a wider tire if its one with lower tread knobs (like a Schwalbe Racing Ralph or a Kenda Small Block 8). I simply measured the clearance with what I had for chunky tires. As covered in a post about the elastomers a few months ago, 4.5" maxes out at 2.25" travel.... mind you that's in theory! Its RARE for any elastomer to compress to the full 50% (which is why Manitou's were often listed as 1.6" travel forks). If you wanna permanently limit the travel then take a band saw or exacto knife to the elastomers, trim them down a bit and replace the missing elastomer with a solid plastic spacer or extra washers. Getting back to tires, you can often see a 3mm or so difference in knob heights for the same tire brand, and same nominal size across different models. I just checked clearances on the fork braces of a bunch of my Noleen MegaAir forks (I have a half dozen of them) with some of the different tires and a Hutchinson Scorpion Elite Gold 2.0 was 3mm lower in top-dead-center knob height than a Hutchinson Mosquito AirLite 2.0.
> 
> If I had NOT sold it, it would right now be on a Specialized Hardrock Ultra for my friend isabelle as she craves pink stuff and its one of the only forks I can think of to ever get pink decals, and in a 1" steerer size, and its sprung stiff enough for her weight (she's heavier than I am).


Thanks.


----------



## arcdesigns (Jul 24, 2007)

Here are the forks with the new 1 1/8' Steerer and Chris King Crownrace.


----------



## arcdesigns (Jul 24, 2007)

I rebuilt the forks and just incase installed them on a cruiser.

Here are some first pics.


----------



## slimjoe (Dec 1, 2005)

*Mrc Shaka Parts*

Howdy folks, im looking for parts for a MRC SHAKA FORK..1" steerer/crown and inner bushes

Any leads would be very useful and hugely appreciated:thumbsup:


----------



## slimjoe (Dec 1, 2005)

*MRC SHAKA fork crown and 1" steerer*

Help

Could do with finding these parts for my project.

Any leads or help hugely appreciated


----------

