Okay, here goes...
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View attachment 1098
This guy. A shop rider of us, Harley Harin. You may recognise him from having a full videopart in Rebel's
"Just a stupid video". He's also THE single most hyped person you can ever meet in the real life.
Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy?
And nah, we've only had a couple of minor forktube issues where the dude uses superhigh bars but at the same time does some occasional flip and flair combos which apply a tremendous amount of leverage stress towards the lower-mid front area, such as the top of the forktube, the SCS clamp and the bottom of the handlebars. And for a 1 1/8" diameter forktube compared to bars where oversized 1 3/8" OD tubing is used, Thom Cat's original .095" wall just isn't thick enough for Harley's riding, as it turns out. The OG forktube started to warp, disfigure, causing some minor tightening issues and clucks in the system. If I recall correctly, then we refurbished the fork by adding some .120" wall tubing. That is/was enough to withstand the stress Harley puts on his scooters.
Later on the same dude changed his fork for a lighter, Pilot fork, though. And is currently still riding its stock tubing (.095" wall thickness) as of today.
Afterwards in a combination of swapping forks between the three-or-four of us, we have (quite recently, actually) managed to snap the .120" wall Thom Cat exactly at the welding, where its connected to the OG .095" tubing half-way down and it turned out that the guy who worked on it did not follow all of my instructions, which was a bit of a bad suprise to me, otherwise its 2nd life would have found its end in another way perhaps. We'll never know until the next round. Because all the other SR forks I've performed this forktube mod onto following
all the correct instructions, have not been broken. And we are years deep. One our eldest, a highly-modified SR v.1 fork, is actually two-thirds of a decade old — still in on its two feet and ready to take on challenges.
#veteranfork
DISCLAIMER & ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
Thom Cats are great forks. We do these modifications because sometimes parts need to be modified & fine tuned according to each individual rider role of us. In Harley's case, he's a big guy and his scooter needs to put up some crazy shit. Hence it's a partial reason why we give zero fucks about warranties given to us with the rest undisclosed reasons. And also because that particular fork mentioned above, in text, is a custom-made zero offset build of a V1 Thom Cat which makes it a very unique part to have in our arsenal for very specific needs that have arisen, are and will arise. By taking care of your parts ensues an extended lifetime for the products you have obtained. Otherwise ordering a new copy of this as the opposing result is just a complete brainfuck and a very, VERY time-consuming process in this corner of the World. Fixing is cheap. As said before: we consider forktube "adventures" as minor issues, cause they are frequent in our family. Other than that, its legs are in great condition.
My personal opinion is that Harley's crazy ass Thom Cat has friggin NINE lives. Even though two of them have been used, I don't see its legs flying off anytime soon. A Cat worth keepin'. A Cat worth taking care of.
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As for the instagrammed fork on the previous page (quoted below),
I have reason to believe that THAT is not a "riding injury".
How, you may ask? Well, allow me to explain:
I consider the issues we've treated on Harley's Cat as riding-related "injuries", because the injuries are created by the forces used of actual riding, pulling flairs, landing flips and such, that applies leverage on the forktube area. I don't see how THAT (as shown below) could even ever happen if you ride like Harley, UNLESS you hit a curb at 40mph with full weight distributed on the deck (I'm pretty sure you could snap any bar or an SCS clamp off that way as well though, haha) OR that scooter has suffered some major bail which caused the scooter land from some height and distance with probably-not-your-average speed, probably straight to its fork. Yup, you don't fix that. You just don't. It's toast. The question here is: did the initial cracks occur when it was bailed from a trick or when the scooter was abused, thrown, as in user-error? Or was it the combination of the two over time? I mean, shit happens, cracks can evolve without you knowing unless you check your parts weekly (yea, true, I know, I too think I should check my scooter prior every sesh, even if it's a tank).
Bottom line: take care of your Cats and feed them lots of heavy metal; and that amputee version of a Cat shown below is either a fall injury, a user-error or a combination of both. Either way I'm interested in its history. Does its owner have an account on SR?
Thank you for reading.
