A Secondary Advantage: Achieving Correct Bolt Torque

You should always use a torque wrench to tighten your triple clamp to fork tube bolts. Always! Why? For similar reasons to the above section. Too much torque will result in too much clamping load on the fork tube, which will distort it. And this distortion will cause binding as the fork bushing travels through the tube. There's good news here, though; you can avoid this distortion by using a torque wrench and tightening the bolts to the recommended torque value. That's it! It doesn't matter whether you have a split clamp or a traditional clamp, using the correct torque will keep this from happening.

That said, the split clamp makes torquing the bolts correctly very easy. With a traditional clamp, you (usually) have two bolts that tighten a single clamping surface to the fork tube. If you tighten one bolt, the other bolt relaxes a little. Tighten the other bolt back down and the first bolt relaxes. In order to achieve the correct and even torque between the two bolts, you have to tighten back and forth between both bolts, over and over until they're both correct. It's not a huge deal, but it is mildly annoying, especially after you tighten down a split clamp! The split clamp is, well, split. Each bolt tightens down a section of the clamp independent of the other section, so one bolt doesn't affect the other. You torque one bolt down, then the other bolt, and you're done. There's no back and forth to deal with. It's not a big deal, especially for the experienced mechanic, but it is nicer.

OK, if you've seen Xtrig's promotional "circularity demonstration" video, you may have some more questions about this... Give that video a watch now that you've read my paragraph above. Xtrig's point is that the clamping load of an "opposing clamp" distorts the fork tube less and allows for smoother sliding of the tube. But there are some key things they're leaving out:

• Remember what I said about needing to tighten the bolts back and forth to get the correct torque distribution on a solid clamp? You'll notice that they don't do that in their video for the "bad" traditional clamp. But they do for their own clamps... That will make a difference for the reasons I wrote above.
• They're comparing apples to oranges a bit here. In the video they're using a KTM/Husky clamp for this demonstration, in particular a stock clamp against their ROCS clamps. The mass-produced stock clamps are not going to hold a tight tolerance on the fork tube bore, especially when compared to the much higher priced Xtrig clamps that are undoubtedly more precise.
• Torque is only one input into the clamping load, friction is the other, and it's a big one! The clamping load is what's causing binding, not the bolt torque directly. Lubricated bolts can create up to 50% more clamping load than dry bolts, so it would be easy to create a false effect for the viewer by simply greasing the bolts on the clamp you want to look bad. I'm not saying that this is what they've done, and there's really no evidence to suggest that, but they do have a vested interest in making their clamps look better than a standard clamp and the viewer wouldn't know one way or the other...
• We've done this exact test, and the results didn't line up with the video. All clamps (including the ROCS clamps, stock clamps, and our clamps), will distort the fork tube slightly and cause binding. We found no noticeable difference between the Xtrig ROCS and our clamps when using proper torque and tightening techniques. And when using the right torque value, the binding is minimal. This just shows how important it is to use a quality torque wrench when tightening your triple clamps.

So, the video ignores some key issues. But it's a marketing video, not an engineering video, and we shouldn't read too much into it. There's nothing wrong with an "opposing clamp" system, but there's no real advantage to it either. We've done a lot of testing, and the most important points that eliminate fork tube slipping and bushing binding in the clamp area are: using the correct torque, using a high quality triple clamp that has a precisely machined bore, and making sure the clamping interface is clean and free of dirt/grease when assembling it. That's it! It doesn't matter what clamps you use so long as you hit those three points. If you're still worried about your fork tubes slipping, torque down the top triple clamp just a little more. The top clamp's torque won't cause any fork binding as the bushing doesn't slide through that area, but it will help keep things from slipping.

They're Not All the Same