Lauf Grit SL

£900 Unique design from the innovative Icelanders

Weight 960g Travel 30mm Rake 47mm Axle to crown 420mm

The Grit SL looks completely different to a telescopic fork, its unique springs suspending the fork dropout. This design also has no internal moving parts, making it the easiest suspension fork to maintain, but that does mean you can’t tune its performance at all. Positively, it’s the lightest suspension fork available, weighing only around 400g more than your typical rigid carbon gravel fork.

With no serviceable parts, I’d just advise keeping the Grit clean, especially around the glass fibre leaf springs that give it its 30mm of travel. Any scoring or cracks in these flexible parts will need to be checked out by Lauf immediately.

On gravel roads and scarred tarmac, the smooth nature of the leaf springs working in unison is a dream for upper-body comfort and endurance riding. Its similar to the feel you get from bikes such as Specialized’s Futureshock-equipped Diverge STR or Trek’s Domane with Isospeed, while Redshift’s Shockstop stem also creates a similar feel.

The Grit SL’s constant damping works best when you’re seated in the drops or on the hoods. It suffers when you get out of the saddle, though, with the lack of rebound control and lockout meaning the fork does bob a lot. As a taller, heavier rider I got more of the bobbing effect than my smaller fellow tester Russ, but we both experienced it on harder-effort climbs.

On rooty or rocky descents, the fork can also feel choppy as the rebound of the leaf springs can become overwhelmed by the fast frequency of bigger hits. Yet this third-generation SL does a much better job of coping with higher speeds than earlier iterations, though it still waves up and down when compared with the similarly out-there but lockout design of the ultra-stiff Lefty.

If you’re after a fork to reduce fatiguing chatter to an absolute minimum and smooth out gravel roads, ungraded surfaces and byways, then the lightweight Grit SL is all the fork you’ll ever need. If you want a suspension companion for techy, lumpy singletrack trails, however, you’re best looking elsewhere.

Verdict A lightweight, fast-responding comfort giver for gravel roads