The Trust Performance Message linkage fork was an expensive, extravagant, and flawed attempt to change how we think about mountain bike design. The brand ceased operations in the early days of the pandemic, but Travis had high hopes for Trust. He also still has the Message fork he reviewed in 2019. A recent bikepacking trip inspired him to give it a second life with some new bolts, washers, and tiny, tiny bearings.

I’ve collected a lot of bike stuff over the decades, but I wouldn’t call myself a collector. Other than a small milk crate of mid-90’s mathoms, I don’t hold onto anything unless I picture myself actively using it someday. That is, with the strange, bulky exception of this Trust Performance Message linkage suspension fork.

The Trust Effect

Trust Performance was founded in early 2019 by a bike-industry super-group. It was like the Traveling Wilburys, but instead of Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Bob Dylan, it was Hap Seliga, Jason Schiers, and Dave Weagle. Hap Seliga co-founded Competitive Cyclist, Jason Schiers co-founded EDGE (now ENVE) Composites, and Dave Weagle is Dave Weagle. He’s the mind behind the DW Link suspension design, as well as Evil’s Delta linkage, Esker’s Orion linkage, and a few other innovations you’ll see on past, current, and future bikes. A linkage fork was an audacious but fitting debut for the team behind Trust.

Linkage forks seem to make a lot of sense … on the surface. Instead of sliding on plastic bushings, often under extreme lateral load, a linkage fork rolls on ball-bearing pivots. Also, designers can augment the leverage ratio and progressivity much like rear suspension. And they can create dynamic axle paths, potentially making steering a bike feel more stable and consistent throughout its travel. Nevertheless, the linkage-fork concept has repeatedly failed to catch on despite the industry repeated attempts. But maybe the concept hasn’t been the problem. Maybe it’s been the execution.

It’ll Be Different This Time…

Trust seemed to have nailed that part … on the surface. The Message looks weird, but it also looks clean. All the lines kinda flow together. That’s partly because the chassis is entirely carbon, from the lower links all the way up to the tip of the steerer tube. And inside the organic shell are some mechanical marvels. The Message fork doesn’t work like a Lauf leaf-spring fork. Each leg gets an air spring, and one leg gets a hydraulic damper. And Trust didn’t outsource the damper design or production to a third party like X-Fusion or SR Suntour. They made it themselves. And it wasn’t cheap. The Message fork debuted at $2,700. Even when it dropped to $1,975 just a few months later, it was still nearly twice the price of a top-end telescoping fork.

But it doesn’t really matter. You can’t even buy a Message fork now, nor the longer-travel Shout fork that followed it. Trust ceased operations in April of 2020. That was a tough time. Our industry had no idea the tantalizing but tragic COVID bubble was coming, so the investors who had funded Trust’s extravagant beginnings got cold feet. But there was another problem. The forks didn’t ride that well.

The Message has about 130 mm of travel, but offers nowhere near the comfort of a telescoping 130 mm fork. Initial bumps often seem to travel directly through the chassis into your hands. It’s especially bad when touching down from a drop or jump. I remember straining to say a few positive things when I reviewed the Message soon after launch. Like that it behaved really well when picking lines down steep sections, and stayed remarkably poised under heavy braking. And once you crack through that layer of harshness, the Message fork could keep a bike pretty stable.

The axle moves slightly rearward as the fork compresses. This helps maintain a consistent “trail,” which is the horizontal distance between where the front tire touches the ground, and where an imaginary line through the steering axis intersects the ground in front of it. This dimension, not head angle, is the best measure for how “twitchy” a bike will turn. Unfortunately, simply being less twitchy is not enough to make up for a suspension fork’s failure to actually provide suspension.

What Went Wrong

I recently talked to Dave Weagle himself about what went wrong with Trust’s first products. He didn’t deny that they had significant shortcomings, but he couldn’t get too specific on the record regarding why. Mainly, he confirmed a common suspicion that the unique chassis was too stiff, which prevented the significant fore / aft flex present on traditional forks. That flex helps soften impacts that aren’t perfectly parallel with the fork, meaning most impacts. He also said the damper–built on an uncommon “thru-shaft” design to limit lag in damping response–limited the lag too much. I personally think it was overdamped, too, which didn’t help. And there were potential solutions for all of these issues, but without funding, there was no way to implement them in the second generation. And without anyone left to request my review fork be returned, it sat in my crawlspace. Until I had this idea.

The Idea

I’ve been a huge fan of Old Man Mountain racks for a while now. They’ve been fixtures on my previous and current touring bikes. I love having an unobstructed handlebar and unencumbered use of my dropper post. Plus, the freedom to add pannier bags if I need extra room. And I love how easy they are to slap onto my mountain bike when I need to go out for an overnighter. But I recently got the itch to build up a dedicated bikepacking bike. Something that the bags and racks could stay on permanently, not to mention the Brooks B-17 and deep-sweep bars. This is the bike I teased in my Fair Drop Best saddle clamp review and my Transmission Dust-Up. It’s a Marin San Quentin, a hardcore hardtail that happened to fit my giant top-tube bag, my tiny frame bag, and my Trust Message fork.

The Trust fork was a good fit for this project because, if I could mount the rack to the “upper” fork legs, that would mean the weight it carries would be sprung, not unsprung. Mounting your gear to the fork lowers / front hub means your gear is subject to all the bumps and dips you encounter on the trail. That will cost you a small portion of the momentum and comfort that the suspension is supposed to offer. And it’s honestly not that big a deal. Your upper body weighs much more than the stuff you’re gonna mount on your fork legs, so the suspension still suspends. Plus, mounting to your fork lowers pretty much eliminates the need to increase spring preload based on the weight you’re carrying. But I’m all about optimization. And I was curious if it would even work.

The Execution

I started by looking at the frontmost pivot. This is where I would mount the rack lowers. Turns out that the pivot bolt is an M8 x .75 bolt, which is the same as a chainring bolt. Chainring bolts are big, hollow, and often aluminum. And they happen to be easy to run an M5 x 0.8 tap through, which is exactly the bolt size most racks mount to. So, I threaded the inside of a couple alloy chainring bolts and replaced the nice, flush, color-matched ones that came with the fork. Voila. All I needed to do was install a pair of Old Man Mountain “pucks” to anchor the rack uppers to, and I’d be off to the not-races. But while mocking everything up for where I’d position those mounts, I realized something. The pivot bolts rotate as the fork compresses. So, those bolts would probably loosen up or strip out before I got to the end of my street… unless they could pivot, too.

If you’re not familiar with Old Man Mountain, their claim to fame is their ability to bolt to any bike, whether or not that bike has rack mounts. They connect to special axles from their conjoined-twin brand, Robert Axle Project. The system is extremely robust, thanks to the burly axles originally designed to pull B.O.B. trailers. And thanks, also, to the large rack eyelets designed to mate with those burly axles. The eyelets happen to have an inner diameter of exactly 10 mm, interrupted by the inner shelf that catches an M5 mounting bolt. A quick Google search took me to a supplier with 10mm O.D. / 5mm I.D. bearings. I added to cart.

These bearings are tiny, but each rack eyelet fits four of them. Three inboard of that shelf, and one outboard. They fit snug enough that they didn’t wobble, but not so snug that I couldn’t gently tap them out. Before installing them, I drilled out the shelf just enough to accommodate a free-floating spacer between the inner and outer bearings to prevent side-loading. If you’ve ever worked on old-school three-piece BMX cranks, it’s like the metal sleeve that goes between the cups. Of all the hacks I’ve pulled off in my very limited workshop, this is probably the one I’m most proud of.

I used the Elkhorn rack for this project not only because it’s lightweight, but also because it’s effectively “modular.” The reversible lowers bolt to a reversible upper, so I had a lot of freedom to position things however suited my needs. The only off-menu cheat I had to do was add a small extension to the rear platform mount. This allowed me to keep the rack level despite having to tilt steeply backward to meet the fork crown. More importantly, it made room for the tire at bottom-out. With a couple pucks securely affixed to the uppers via Old Man Mountain’s plastic / metal hybrid zip ties, it was time for a test ride.

The Ride

Now, I won’t say it’s perfect. Riding a 60-pound fully loaded bike is rarely perfect. Mainly, the forward-reaching legs on the Trust fork meant forward-reaching pannier bags on the rack. When I was on a slow climb, all that weight in front of the axle made the front end want to flop a bit. I could keep it steady with minimal effort if the climb was smooth and straight, but it took extra muscle to fight it when I was weaving up technical singletrack. That said, I’ve felt a similar issue with handlebar bags, especially when I’ve had to load them to max capacity. When a heavy bar bag is cantilevered out away from the cables and controls, similar flopitation will ensue. I’m not sure what the future holds for this bike, but a Wolf Tooth angle-adjust headset in its steeper setting would probably help ease this issue.

Everything came together on the descents. I’ll admit the Trust fork still made for some pretty harsh landings, but I didn’t (and shouldn’t) be jumping much if I’m riding fully loaded. When I kept the wheels on the ground, I found that the extra weight helped ease the harshness I felt when I first rode this fork. It worked like one of the “tuned mass dampers” that are showing up on some World Cup downhill racer’s bikes. It took the edge of those initial spikes and allowed the linkage to behave the way it was supposed to. Also, it kept the steering calm when descending steep singletrack where a traditional bikepacking setup can get sketchy as it approaches bottom-out.

It also added peace of mind. Again, a traditional Old Man Mountain rack on a traditional suspension fork is perfectly sound, but it directs more energy into the wheels and tires if you try to ride like you would on an unloaded bike. A couple months before embarking on this journey with my Trust fork, I broke a spoke after a pretty rowdy three-day-er around Tahoe. I guess Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride isn’t exactly a bikepacking trail, so that’s on me. But the reduced unsprung weight has me worried a bit less about impact damage like broken spokes and pinch flats. The high-frequency hits were softer, and the high-volume rattle was quieter. I think I’m onto something here.

Of course, more testing is needed. Although those lower mounting bolts are under more shear load than bending load, the bearings do introduce motion that wouldn’t exist on a traditional setup. Not sure what that’ll mean over time. And I did my best to align everything while putting this together, but it’s nowhere near as plum or stiff as a suspension pivot. Give it enough time and enough weight, and those tiny bearings might chew themselves up. I’ve added parts for a full rebuild to my kit in case that happens, but who knows what a total failure might look like. If it comes to that, I’ll let you know. But in the meantime, I’ll be out there on this beautiful ugly thing, talking about it to anyone who will listen.