Cane Creek

Helm 160 Conrad LTD Edition Boost Fork - 27.5in

When you set your riding to the gold standard, you don't want to let your style fall anywhere short. The Cane Creek Helm 160 Conrad LTD Edition 27.5in Boost Fork is there to help with that, with shiny gold aesthetics to pair perfectly with your regal trail prowess while you charge into root latticed old-growth forests, and hammer up bedrock slabs. Named after a 12-year-old North Carolinian who stumbled upon a 17lb gold nugget in the mountains back in 1799, the Helm ConRad gets the gold treatment, including a gold crown and matching graphics to bring out the bling. Underneath the gold plating it features the same Helm that you've heard us gloat about — 160-millimeters of travel and 35-millimeter stanchions that offer you stiff and powerful tracking, with dynamic and supple suspension that soaks up the blows that gnarly enduro racing throws your way. Instead of employing the twin-tube damper that's drawn acclaim from their Double Barrel Shocks, Cane Creek found that a mono-tube damper is most effective for simplicity of servicing and reliability purposes.

As expected, the Helm 160 Boost Fork is air-sprung, with the Doublair Spring giving riders the ability to re-adjust an indexed rod and static piston assembly. Removing this assembly and adjusting the piston up or down effectively changes how the fork ramps up—all without adding volume spacers like you've come to expect. This gives you the ability to gain the progressive ramp-up desired for taking bigger hits and rallying across rock gardens without messing with volume spacers.

The damper employs the same structure used by the industry behemoths, and for good reason, namely for its lightweight build and functional lay-out. Instead of setting itself apart in the damper department, the Helm 160 Boost Fork emphasizes its damper tune, resulting from long hours in the engineering department, plus extensive testing by everyday trail riders and pro-class downhill racers alike. This damper gives you the ability to tune 10 and 20 clicks of high and low-speed compression, with an additional 15 positions of low-speed rebound adjustment.

Independent positive and negative air chambers require the rider to manually adjust the negative chamber by depressing a valve, which then equalizes both chambers. This gives riders additional tuning options to set different pressures in each chamber, albeit with a bit more complicated set-up than forks with self-equalizing chambers. This is a welcome feature for the discerning rider fine-tuning every last detail in their fork's operation.

Another notable feature, the Helm 160 Boost Fork adjusts in travel from 140 to 170 millimeters with two included spacers. This option gives riders a lot of leeway for their build, whether it's an everyday trail workhorse or a longer-travel enduro rig. There's even more adjustment within the travel range, it's just that you'll need to purchase separate travel spacers to bump it down to 100 millimeters or lengthen it to 170 millimeters of travel.