The Worst MTB Product I Have Ever Used! | GMBN Tries Cheap AliExpress Forks

I just bought a set of forks from AliExpress for under £150. They won't break the bank, but will they break me? There's only one way to find out. They independently move around. So much flex. Oh, they're so big. Are you sure this isn't a setup? First of all, go and hit that like button or subscribe if you're new to the channel so I can continue doing stupid things like this in the I've gone and bought some of the cheapest sets of forks on the market and cheapest on AliExpress as well. So let's go and take a closer look. These are the RaceWork R7 Bike Fork 29 120 Mountain MTB Bike of Air Damping Airspring Fork Full Suspension Boost Forks. A catchy model name. I'm sure you'll agree. They come pre-installed with chips and a baggy seal spring painted in matte black with a glossy leaked oil finish. The logo online seems to be a shramalgamation of the Eagle logo and race face. Very clever marketing. I'm sure you'll agree. I paid £143.78 and that includes £25 of shipping. Took 17 days to come from China. For my money, I get 120 mils of travel with 32 mil stanchions and a free through axle. Easy for you to say. They have a claimed weight of 2020 grams for the 27.5 inch model. Let's see how accurate these stats are. So first up, did I actually get what I paid for? How accurate is that listing? Let's check the stanchions first with my trusty calipers. They're said to be 34 mil stanchions and 33.9. That's close enough. It's just, yeah, 33.96. Nice and straight. I see. So they claim to be 2020 grams for a 27.5 inch version. This is a 29 and it is 2,340 grams. So a couple of hundred over, but it is a 29er. So it's pretty accurate I'm going to go with. I'll just take some air out just to see what the actual full travel is without any air. And it'd be a good opportunity to see how easy these are to set up. So, uh, what the hell? I've never heard a set of forks quack before. How much travel have we got? Will it actually move now? It does all move. Pretty much bottoms out. Yeah. So actually there's more like 127 mils of travel in these. Uh, it's supposed to be 120. Anyway, let's give them a score on accuracy. Accuracy rating 4.5. Right. Let's get some air in these and pop them in the bike and see how easy they are to set up. Look at the return on that. You have to wait weeks for the rebound. And I don't think it's even adjustable. Is it? Oh, there's a dial. I don't know if it does anything. It's just sort of winds out. Oh, it works. Rebound actually works. That's pretty sweet. Actually. I'm not totally unhappy with that. That's pretty good. They're a little bit thick. It's like they're too thick to go in. The hell? Ta-da! It happened. Does the disc go in? The disc has sort of gone in. They independently move around. That's really cool. Uh, yeah, I suppose that is standard for inverted forks, but that's weird. Uh, it's in. It is in. It doesn't actually have any threads in the fork itself. It's just like a weird axle that goes into a bolt. I'm into it. Let's see if we can get it all the way in. I'm gonna have to twist the forks to get it in by the looks of it. It doesn't fill me with a lot of joy, this cable work. It's gonna rub in here. It's a bit tight with my brakes. And I have to have this quite high to make sure it doesn't rub on the wheel anywhere. If I had it lower down, it might actually catch. So, um, it is what it is. It's £142.78. Oh my God. There's so much flex in these forks. Um, it almost touches the wheel. Oh my days. Okay. They weren't actually any more difficult to fit and set up than any other fork. Um, I don't like the fact that it didn't tell me what rotor size it was on the website, although we did work it out. And I don't like this cable routing here as it just rubs on the wheel. So, uh, my setup score is setup score four out of five. Right. In all honesty, I didn't think I'd get to this stage, which is actually riding it. Uh, and now that I have, I'm a little bit worried because it's like £142 of metal pressurized to a hundred PSI. Um, I'm sure everything will be fine. Let's try. Shall we? Okay. We're riding so far. So good. Ooh, a little bit springy, a little bit pogo sticky, uh, cable rub on the tire. Nice. Um, let's take it to some single tracks. See what it does. They're not terrible at climbing. Actually. It's quite a lot of support in them, but that's cause I did whack a bit of safety PSI in there. We need to corner really to see if they flex. Let's go. Alas corners. Let's see how these puppies fare on these. I had to put the brakes on right there because as I came off that little drop, I heard a little ting and yeah, my axles come loose. Okay. We're secure. Let's rewind. Try that again. Oh, I can feel them tucking. Oh my God. You turn the steering, you turn the handlebars and the wheel doesn't actually follow. That's scary. Oh, they're so vague. That was really scary. The steering went really vague. Um, especially into the corners. I, it felt like I had a flat tire and it was squirming. Um, but it's just the flex and the forks. I mean, you saw how flexible they are. So anytime you load a corner, they're flexing. And that means when I push on the handlebars, the steering is turning, but the wheels staying straight. So it makes the corners feel really vague and really unpredictable. And it's pretty scary. Uh, maybe it's time to move over to my ride score already. Riding score one. Okay. Let's talk about quality. Um, now obviously there's some paint peeling and a bunch of chips and what looks to be possibly some, uh, fatigue marks on the crown as well, which is a little disconcerting. Um, which all adds up to just not really a quality product. Uh, I have checked the air pressure after my riding and it hasn't lost any. So despite the fact that the seals look quite baggy, um, and poor quality, it has held the air pressure, which is good. Um, but there is a bit of knocking going on in the actual forks themselves, which suggests that perhaps the bushings aren't sized correctly. Um, and yeah, I don't like the fact that this cable is rubbing against my wheel, um, and the axle coming loose. I mean, that is not what you want on a bike ride, but I want to get a professional opinion. So I'm going to head over to TF tuned, a suspension specialist who are going to open these puppies up for me and tell me what they think. Greg, thank you so much for inviting me into your workshop. And, um, I kind of want to know how close to death I am from having ridden these things. What do you think about these? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Well, it looks like some other forks. Yeah. Okay. All right. I wasn't actually expecting it to be inverted to be honest. It really shows how much, um, I pay attention. Well, yeah. I've seen, I've seen a couple of two, three forks that are this, this way up. Um, but yeah, not. I've done that as carefully as possible and just thought that was like a kind of, you know, but that is sure. This isn't a setup, but you honestly, that's like someone's just put that on in the factory, completely cross threaded it. Yeah. But it's all right though. Cause this bit is only holding from wheel to that side of the, um, the leg. It's not really that important. I suppose it's kind of, you know, the spring. So if this is supposed to be a 2024 model year fork. Yes. Fox used this back in the nineties. Right. Yeah. That's quite RockShox-esque from like a rev of maybe 2005, six maybe. There's a bit of oil in there. Hey, we finally got some oil and they've got a seal on it as well. Yeah. Maybe this was made in a different factory. I already know I'm going to give these a durability rating of zero out of five for sure. You can see that something's been dragged up and down this probably wasn't intentional. So the upshot of this visit is that these things are just so badly put together. They're baggy. They've been cut up by the workmen with their ham fisted tooling and putting them together. And there's just metal shavings all in there. That's just going to make these things not last very long at all. And when they do finally give up the ghost, they're not serviceable. So 142 pounds is cheap, but it's quite expensive for a throwaway item. When you could just buy something maybe at 300 pounds, you can get some Marzocchi Bomber Z1s in a sale, for example, which would be serviceable and they will be held to higher standards when putting these together in terms of quality and safety. Or even just go to eBay or Craigslist and get yourself some secondhand branded forks because you know that at least there'll be some parts out there that can fix them and service them and keep them running in the long run. So that's my advice. But if you want to see more detail on these forks being torn down by our pro Greg downstairs, then head over to GMBN Tech to watch the worst forks ever being opened up. But for now, thank you for watching. And let me know down in the comments below, have you had any experience with unbranded bike parts? Did they work out or did they not?