Front racks, suspension forks

[DandeGrande]

Does anyone who has done long distance, self-contained touring have a successful experience of mounting panniers on a front rack mounted on a suspension fork?

[bikerbob]

I rode for 6 days on a railway trail on a Norco mtn bike with front suspension and no eyelets with an Old Man Mtn front rack.  I did not even lock out the front suspension.  Everything was fine.  I would not hesitate to go coast to coast with that set up

[valygrl]

I had a Delta rack on my MTB for my first tour, did about 2000 miles with it, no issues.

I kept the fork locked out the whole trip (all pavement), but I don't think it would have mattered.

[JayH]

Similar to Bikerbob, I had a Hardtail Marin Team mtn bike that I toured and also commuted to work on (though I didn'tuse the front rack for commuting) that worked fine.  I had an Old Man Mountain rack which was a QR fork mounted to the V-brake bosses on the fork. You will need to use P-clamps if you have a suspension fork made for disc brakes and don't have those brake bosses but otherwise, they worked for me.   My fork was an old Marzocchi Bomber Z2 with no lock-out.

Jay

[TCS]

The Tubus Swing front rack mounts above the front suspension.

HTH,
tcs

[GeorgeC]

I have used an Old Man Mountain front rack on my Specialized Rockhopper for four week long bike tours very successfully. This old bike has a support between the two front forks so I didn't even need to use the brake bosses.