Truth be told they are pretty crap. lewis’s bike originally came with a 50mm coil sprung suntour XCT jr fork. The fork is as basic as it comes with one coil spring in one leg, no damping and is only screwed together in one leg as well. The leg with the coil spring has preload adjustment but its completely pointless as even at preload turned all the way out the fork hardly moves with his weight.
The fork also only manages around 40mm travel with my weight pushing down which is down to the large bottom out bumper. This can be sorted by cutting the bumper as shown in this thread on MTBR.
Although Lewis has an RST first air 24, I thought I would give the suntour a quick clean and service after I did the RST. Firstly it is only held together with one bolt at the bottom of the leg that contains the spring so it was easy to remove. The sliders came out relatively easy and surprisingly the lowers were pretty clean although the grease, no sponge/oil lubrication, was pretty thick. A quick clean and a regrease with stendec fork grease made the fork a lot better. It removed a lot of the stiction that was present and lewis was able to compress the fork a bit.
So while the quick service made the fork better, the overly strong spring makes it totally unsuitable for a young kid and with no alternative springs available to purchase, the fork is a 2050g lump of usless weight. I wouldn’t buy a bike specifically because it had one of these forks, however if you have one I recomend you give it a quick clean and service with a high quality grease every couple of months to make sure it is working in top condition.
note – remember to remove the spring when putting the fork back together so as to not trap air in the lower leg.
MTB mumblings 