building a magna

The front suspension should soften up the bumps comsiderably, some of the cheaper front ends like on the Walmart bikes are either too soft and they will steal some of your pedaling energy when trying to accelerate, and others are rock hard and won't really soften the bumps as well as they could. The best front suspension setups will have some way to adjust the spring tension or air pressure to get just the right ride where it don't wear you out when trying to accelerate or climb, but soft enough to make the ride a lot more comfortable over the bumps, this effect is a Lot more noticeable on bikes with rear suspension or full suspension. I had a mongoose mountain bike that looked really cool so I bought it, but unless the rear spring was set as tight as possible it would steal most my pedaling energy if trying to accelerate quickly or maintain a higher speed. I've also noticed most the high end front and rear shocks have so,e kind of lockout feature to avoid this problem when cruising at higher speeds o when climbing or accelerating hard. This isn't quite such a problem when an engine is involved since they don't require putting your weight on the pedals to make it go and the suspension can be set up a lot softer. It's also fairly easy to get a decent quality front end off eBay if you want something more effective, there are quite a few middle of the line suspension forks that can be had for $100 or less, I've even seen some nice ones go for as low as $30 or so...

That's a really nice looking bike for motorizing by the way...

Most the forks on these less expensive bikes wont be adjustable, about the best you can do with them is clean and re lube them to stop them from binding, but I've also seen some of the cheaper ones like they sell at walmart bind right out of the box...

Best thing to do if trying to keep it cheap would be to put a regular non suspension fork on it or try and get something decent off ebay that's in your budget, but then you got shipping costs to deal with... Maybe check the local bike shops to see if anyone has a decent used fork that's not too expensive, you can always paint it black if it dont match the bike...

If it's a low budget/low profit build I'd leave as is as long as it's safe to ride... I got 3 cheap suspension forks in my stock room right now, they're safe to ride on but either too soft or too harsh with no real in between...

Yup... seen those too... or the rear shock set up to look like an elastomer and it's just a plastic cover, not to mention most the rear shocks have no damping ability at all... last one I took apart had just a chunk of felt sandwiched between a set of washers and saturated with some nasty sticky grease, and another sticky grease saturated felt pad for the pistonless piston rod to bottom out on in case the rider rolls over a pebble in the road. They do know how to make them look cool tho...