Only got hairy because it was very rough and i didn't have a lot of room to maneuver. I think i could go faster on a good hill on a nice surface, wow, 83 mine will not do that, thats for sure. I will do a lowracer one day, although i just couldn't justify it now. This one feels low enough around other bikes as it is.
Suspension, y, it is necessary. I tried first with standard forks, not bad for handling on the smooth although traction is bad. Power to the ground relies on keeping contact with it. Traveling along even a cemented path i could feel each expansion crack through the drive, just slipping a bit. Then there is driveways, going up one of those under power lost over a 1/4 turn, a full stroke at some speeds.
These forks had quite some curved rake making handling badly twitchy, so i spun them around for serious trail, which worked, although made the skipping worse and the forks would have failed in this arrangement.
After this, i used some MTB shock forks as pic below. This worked well, although would need a lot steeper head tube angle as i was getting stress fatigue in parts.
I know this approach was over the top, although it has sure been an interesting excersise. I can put this bike into, over, across anything and it just makes a horrid noise and deals. And it has served me well at least twice now. Once with the MTB forks, i got off the side and then realised there was a big ditch in the cement, i think the non shocked forks would have crumpled that time and again since in the current arrangement.
I agree, there could be a lot done differently in a race version, although this is more my all terrain model
Older version really roughly assembled to test the layout.
