edscott.

Steel forks are slightly curved forward for a reason, the resilience of steel and the curve format provide a certain amount of flexibility and shock absorption. Aluminum does not flex, it rather will fatigue and eventually break.

So is there any good reason to use an aluminum fork, besides the low cost?

Nessism

Too many assumptions. The curve in a fork doesn't serve much if any functional reason other than to create offset/rake; crowns are typically designed so the fork legs exit parallel to the steerer, so the rake/offset is created by curving the blades. A straight leg fork and a curved fork using the same fork blades and offset will perform virtually if not identical.

Aluminum as a material is more flexible than steel by a 3X factor per unit of material. Early aluminum frames were quite flexy as were aluminum forks; forks made by Kinesis and SR Sakae were quite soft and absorbent, to the point that racers didn't like them. As time went on aluminum frames were beefed up, to an extreme in many cases, as a hedge against breaking. Aluminum forks stayed in the market but there wasn't a ton of advanced design refinement done, partly because carbon became all the rage.

So to answer the question, there is nothing wrong per say with an aluminum fork but as always, the devil's in the details. The fork can be designed to be either stiff or soft, there is no definitive narrative when it comes to such things.

fietsbob

My screwed and glued AlAn All Aluminum Fork had raked blades , it was the lower head lug that cracked first ..