If you're keeping an older road bike on the road and the original fork has aged out — cracked, crashed, or just past its service life — Ritchey's Comp Carbon Road Fork is one of the few remaining off-the-shelf options that fits the bill. It's a rim-brake, quick-release, threadless setup with curved UD carbon blades and an aluminum steerer, crown, and dropouts. The 1-1/8" steerer version covers most road bikes from the late '90s through the early 2010s, back when threadless 1-1/8" was the dominant standard before tapered steerers and disc brakes took over.

Construction uses what Ritchey calls High Modulus Fiber, with the fiber orientation tuned to manage side load, torsion, and impact at the spots where each shows up. The aluminum steerer extends down into the crown rather than bonding to a separate piece, which is a durability choice — bonded carbon steerers can be lighter, but a one-piece alloy steerer-into-crown design is harder to damage during installation and stem clamping, and it gives you a forgiving cut line if you need to trim the steerer.

Geometry is standard road: 43mm rake, 700c wheel, 9x100mm quick-release front axle, and short-reach caliper mount for 39-49mm reach brakes. Maximum tire clearance is 28mm, which is the practical ceiling on most rim-brake road frames anyway. The 300mm uncut steerer length gives you room to set bar height where you want it before cutting.... Read More