You can ride them fairly aggressively without being battered back too much. Having said that, their stiffness could occasionally write cheques that their travel couldn't cash but the only result of this was a muted bottom out, there was no crazy rebound 'powerball' kickback or anything. We'd recommended pairing these forks with a similarly taut front wheel. If you ride hard, bit within the realms of 100mm travel, you'll love these.
Overall: The best 100mm fork I've ever ridden. Racy and minimalist. Stiff and light. Firm and responsive ride. Expensive. Excellent.
The third 100mm Magura on test is a light yet stiff and impressively controlled podium hunter.
Overall: 4/5
World Cup Light, Trail Durable
Making the grade as a budding new cross-country race fork is practically as tough as trying to get on the World Cup podium as a neo-pro. On the way, you can expect many failed attempts that ultimately end up being tossed off the podium,deflated and spewing oil. Not so with Magura’s Durin MD100. According to Magura’s literature, the company set out to design the Durin as an easy-to-adjust, light-weight, cross-country race fork without compromising performance, durability or stiffness.
The Durin sports an air spring, open bath, oil-dampened design, which keeps it at a World Cup weight of 1,500 grams. Remote lockout is standard and features trick, integrated cable routing. The only negative design element I found is that the rebound-dampening knob is on the bottom of the leg. I just prefer to have it moreeasily accessible. Racing is the only true test for a race fork. Not wanting to give the Durin an easy ride into stardom, I set it up on my race bike for the Rabbit Valley Mountain States Cup opener.
After racing on the blocky but fast desert terrain in Rabbit Valley near Fruita,Colo., I was wholly impressed with the ride. The Durin has very aggressive feel,as it should; it’s not overly plush, especially early on in the travel.One cool feature is a sensible Dynamic Lockout System, which maintains the proper sag when the forkis locked out. This keeps your head tube angle true so the handling remains tight and the climbing position is perfect. The Durin rocked on the climbs.The Double Arch Design and 32 mm stanchions keep it distinctly stiff and the steering laser sharp. Also contributing to the overall stiffness are safety dropouts with a 45-degree opening for perfect hub engagement and less load on the quick release, transfering brake torque directly into the dropout. Other notable items are air pressure guidelines printed directly on the fork and post-mount disc tabs(approved for rotors up to 210 mm). Magura truly stepped up to the challenge with the Durin, and I’m excited to see what else they have up their sleeves for 2009.
...click HERE to watch the video!!
The distinctive dual brace design is slimmed down do wafer thicknesses on the Durin, but this still has a noticeable effect. Durin static tests in the workshop revealed that the fork was impressively stiff, and out on the trail it steers and brakes with noticeably better precision and accuracy than nearly all the other forks in the test.
The whole fork has a really well made feel to it too, with crisp castings, durable paint (custom colours are an optional extra) and chunky, easy-to-grab metal adjuster knobs.
The Durin sits up in the travel a bit more at the start of the stroke for a tighter, more racey feel, but it's never rattley or jarring. For a short fork it eats the bigger stuff well, too, with no harsh bottom-out or clunking kickback even when we really walloped it. It's worth noting that the MAGURA rider weight/pressure recommendations are actually spot-on.
The Albert Select damping has given consistent control throughout testing, and not even high-speed runs down our 'steps of doom' pushed it out of control. We like the simple but effective on/off nature of the lockout, too.
Other than that, reliability of our 07 and 08 MAGURA forks has been really good, and MAGURA is the only fork manufacturer to be on hand with a service crew at most major events. Add in the supplied shock pump and a decent price for the performance, and the Durin is a great short-travel all-rounder.
WMB verdict:
Race: 9/10
XC: 8/10
Use: 8/10
Value: 9/10
Light, very stiff and consistently controlled. Very impressive. Overall: 9/10
Tester's thoughts: MAGURA's years of hard work with its fork range is really paying off - to the point where the whole WMB test team is fighting over who gets to use the Durin as a long-term test unit.
Available in 80mm or 100mm travel and weighing 1450g and 1500g respectively the Durin is a flyweight contender. But thanks to its double braces it can stup up a class. A XC fork that isn't flexy - I know it's a novel idea, but it works. In the 80mm guise I tested, the fork was easily as stiff as some 130mm forks I've ridden. This stiffness means that although only 80mm of travel was on offer I felt confident of hitting obstacles at speed and knowing the bike would still be going in the direction I wanted and not deflected off somewhere else. The Double Arch Design also looks really good, and the graphics make it look like a proper 'factory racing' unit, which I love.
Should you want them there is a bar mounted lever (included) for locking out the fork although I've got to say I've never seen the point of locking out 80mm of travel. Losing the lever saves weight - after all they are XC forks. Saying that, the lever is a massive improvement over last year's.
There is a canti boss version available but should you want to run discs you can run anything up to 210mm discs on these XC forks. I love the German sense of humour.
Overall: Three months testing. Light, stiff, good looks. A XC fork for a new generation.
The Durin was ready to rock from the off. Set up is very easy to dial in the way you want and it stays that way over time, and compression damping is spot on.
MBUK verdict:
Performance: 9/10
Value: 8/10
A tight, lightweight fork that'll take a beating like a bigger unit.
