Kowa 160ss: First Impressions
As the weather is getting warmer we are getting more and more time on the bike, which means we can play about on some new stuff! Along with our long term MacMahone Emblem test, we’ll also be testing a number of other components. One of these is the Kowa 160ss suspension fork.
The model shown here is the current incarnation of the fork, a newer improved version will be available from the 21st of March, which is said to be stronger and also has some improvements.
Anyway we had a few minutes play around on the current Kowa this morning and were pretty impressed! Please bear in mind this is an initial impression, and by no means should be regarded as a full test (this is an on going test and we’ll post our conclusions when we have come to them).
We started with a very ’scientific’ ’squish test’. Basically we couldn’t wait to mount them on a bike, so proceeded on pogoing on them in the living room. Luckily we have a set of new (never ridden and not bedded in) Marzocchi 66’s lying round so we had something to compare them to. The Kowa is way lighter than the 66 and is also a hell of a lot smoother! The new 66 felt jerky where as the Kowa felt buttery smooth out of the box. Obviously this really means nothing as we were just bouncing round on forks in our home and not riding them on the trail.
We fitted them to a Santa Cruz Bullit, wound the rebound to its fastest setting and put 85psi in them to start and set them at about 170mm (yes, they’re called 160 as in 160mm of travel, but they are in fact capable of a lot more) a quick ride down a few staircases and we felt they were a little soft, but rode really well! Smooth and supple! After pumping them up to 100psi the felt much better. The Kowa are very sensitive to pressure increases, more so than a Marzocchi fork, so I imagine getting them set up perfectly will take a bit of time.
On to a bigger set of stairs and with more pressure they felt great, just like a long travel fork should, rebounding just in time for each bump and eating up 5 foot drops to flat with ease (remember this was just a short 30 min or so play about so nothing extreme was done).
The travel adjust is really neat, quick and easy to use. It worked really well from 10omm ish up, anything below was really to soft, but in reality your never going to use the lower settings unless your riding uphill.
The 160ss has no external compression, so if you wanted to adjust it you would have to swap the oil and play around the heights, also the 160ss needs a really hard landing to get it to use all of its travel. Kowa say if you want to be able to use the full amount of travel more easily you need again to open them up and lower the oil levels.
We’ll keep you updated with the latest impressions of the fork and also let you know how the upgraded model compares to this model, they should arrive by the end of the month.
Test status: on going! but more than happy for now!
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