Intend is a specialist German fork manufacturer which has announced a major redesign of its products.
The mountain bike suspension fork market is dominated by large legacy brands but, despite this, there are a few smaller players who produce very innovative front-suspension solutions.
Based in Freiburg, Intend is one of those. The low-volume mountain bike fork maker builds a range of inverted forks, which have a significant advantage in seal lubrication and small-bump sensitivity when ridden off-road.
For the 2020 model year, Intend has evaluated the market and analyses the trajectory of trends in mountain bike suspension. Its response has been a collection of design upgrades, which are all applied under the company’s ‘New Age’ suspension product update.
In principle, the Intend range still offers 27.5- or 29-inch versions of its inverted fork design, but there is a treasure of small details, which now make them better than before.
Leveraging the gravitational lubrication properties of an inverted fork design, Intend has upgraded its wiper and oil seals to SKF, which add a marginal 20g of weight but promise excellent serviceability.
As axle and hub standards have reduced in size over the last few years, Intend is aware of this issue and now offers 20- to 15mm axle adaptors to avert compatibility frustration.
Diameter suitability is not the only axle design upgrade Intend is applying with its ‘New Age’ revamp. A perceived weakness of the inverted fork design relates to torsional rigidity. Without a traditional fork arch, they can be susceptible to axle-induced flex during extreme cornering.
To prevent this from turning the axle in its clamped position, Intend has machined knurled surfaces to the axle ends to ensure they have a more secure mechanical bind.
Intend has also added cable clips to tidy up your brake line routing and there are now CNC machined adjustment knobs, to control the low-speed compression and rebound, instead of plastic adjusters.
Pricing and weights for this 2020 Intend Edge forks are €1,899 for the 27.5-inch (2085g) and €1,949 for the 29er (2130g). Travel is adjustable over a tremendous range, from 80- to 180mm, in 10mm increments.
