UGLY fork!!!! WTF is this??

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Just found these while I was surfin?
Some sort of frankenstein linkage fork!
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Has anyone heard, seen or used one of these beasties?
Just curious

[Kevins19]

Yes! That is an Amp Research "Amp F4 BLT" They were really weird when they cam out, and are still weird now! Honestly I don't remember much about them though.

[kiwi]

mate in the early nineties they were the fork that everyone wanted.......

[Kevins19]

Unfortuanetly, I don't remember much about them.

But from an engineering and design point of view they could cause a few probs. the way the fork progresses thru its linkage it would change the wheelbase of the bike thru its travel. As in the front wheel rocks back (toward the rider) and up as it goes thru its range of motion. But, then again if yuo think what all the other forks were at the time. I mean they were quite primative and fragile compared to this design.

[colinv]

As Kiwi says, these were the forks of the moment, the were very light, the whole mongoose full sus bike the were designed with was very light. I've not seen any about for a long time but they were only aimed at lighter riders.

[kiwi]

one of ny ridig buddiies at the time had an AMP,i had a full rigid giant sedona b4 i graduated to the 756.He was a little fella he broke the frame a coupla times i think.The forks worked on a parrallelogram so the wheelbase change was less than it loks in that pic

[Scott]

Sub 3 pound fork!!!

[StoereVent]

Since we are talking about ygly forks:




Jeroen.

[Simon]

Since we are talking about ygly forks:




Jeroen.

Ahhh I always liked that bike,
Whyte bike designed by Jon Whyte he was the suspension designer for Michael Shumacher's world championship winning Benetton F1 car.
I believe his hobby was MTBing so he started his own
company,he is also the designer for Marin as you can obviously see by the main frame and rear suspension design.his new Whyte 46 lightweight long travel full suspension rig uses the new maverick fork.
Simon

[Mr.Ed]

  I seem to remember reading somewhere that the AMP frames were notoriously underbuilt. But not really a bad design.

 Those Whyte frames were on ebay a while back. Quite reasonable I think, If your the kinda person who would ride a seemingly over-engineered bike.?!