The Summer Olympics are only a few short months away, which means it won't be long before cross-country mountain bike racing will garner more mainstream media attention than it has received in all of the years since the 2012 Olympics in London. RockShox is hoping to continue their gold medal winning streak that began back in 2000, and to help keep the victories coming they've completely revamped the SID, updating everything from the damper to the dropouts in an effort to create an extremely light and capable fork designed for XC racing at the highest level.
SID World Cup Details• Intended use: XC racing
• Travel: 100mm
• Wheelsize: 27.5" or 29"
• Air-sprung, Charger damper
• Adjustments: rebound, LSC, lockout
• Stanchions: 32mm
• Axle size: 15x100 or 15x110
• Weight: 1,366 grams (3.01 lb)
• Available: July 2016
• MSRP: $1,150 - $1,225 USD
•
www.rockshox.com,
@SramMedia
The new SID still uses 32mm stanchions, and the World Cup edition retains the carbon steerer and crown, but that's about where the similarities to the prior version end. The new fork has 100mm of travel - the previous 120mm option is nowhere to be found. That's due to the evolution of bike design and riding styles – rather than being long-limbed XC machines, many of today's 120mm bikes fall solidly into the trail category and are better suited to a fork like the Pike with its 35mm stanchions.
Trimming Off the ExcessBy deciding to optimize the SID around 100mm of travel, RockShox was able to take weight savings measures that wouldn't have been possible in a longer-travel version, including the use of shorter upper tubes. Extra material was added to the fork's arch to add stiffness, but other than that, every unnecessary bit of material has been shaved off of the lowers – the disc brake caliper mounting posts have been shortened, and even the lower portion of the magnesium dropouts have a portion knocked out to save weight. The top caps went on a diet too, with lower profile knobs and a design that uses a cassette tool to remove them rather than having wrench flats. The end result is a fork that weighs a scant 1,366 grams (3.01 lb) in the 27.5" configuration. For reference, Fox's recently announced 32 Step-Cast weighs a claimed 1,355 grams.
What's Inside?A lightweight fork is all well and good, but its bump absorption capabilities can't be neglected, especially since World Cup XC courses have been getting increasingly technical over the last few years. To that end, an XC-optimized version of the same damper that's found in RockShox's venerable Pike is housed in the SID's right leg. The damper still uses the same expanding bladder design of the original Charger, but with a slightly different shape and dimensions that allow it to fit in the SID's 32mm stanchions. The damper's internals were also altered in order to make it easier to turn the low-speed compression dial, due to the fact that many riders will be running a remote lockout on the fork for smoother sections of trail.
AdjustmentsRather than having the three main compression settings found on a Pike RCT3, the SID has Open and Lock, and the amount of compression in the Open position can be changed by turning the smaller dial on the top of the fork. When the fork is fully locked out it feels very, very firm – you'll know the instant you hit a bump when the fork is in that setting. There is a blowoff to help prevent any issues if a rider does forget to open up their fork before a descent, but when the blowoff occurs there's still a high level of damping, rather than having the fork go to a fully open state.
The SID's air spring is more linear than the previous version, which makes it easier to tune the fork for different rider weights with the use of RockShox's Bottomless Tokens. After all, it's a lot simpler to make a fork more progressive as opposed to trying to make it less progressive.
OptionsThere are a total of four forks in the new SID lineup, beginning with the highest-end carbon steerer and crown-equipped World Cup, followed by the RLC, the XX, and then the RL. The World Cup and the RLC both use the Charger damper, and the rest of the line use the simpler Motion Control damper, which helps reduce the final cost.
First ImpressionsThese days, the bulk of my riding takes place on trail or all-mountain rigs, and my Lycra-clad XC racing days are now a distant memory, but there's still something infinitely enjoyable about hopping on a bike that's built purely for covering ground as fast as possible. The Scott Spark 900 fits that bill, and I was able to spend a day on one equipped with a new SID up front in order to get an initial feel for the fork's capabilities. The trails on hand were filled with numerous short climbs and descents, enough technical sections to keep me alert, and plenty of tight corners to carve in and out of while trying to figure out just how far the bike's 2.2” tires could be pushed through the gravelly turns.
Even though the SID only has 100mm of travel, and stanchions that look a touch anorexic compared to the 35mm and 36mm options many of us are riding one, on the trail it provided a very smooth, controlled ride, and I didn't have any issues with the amount of stiffness on tap. Granted, the trails weren't extremely technical, but all the same, there were enough hard corners and sudden dips and dives to get a general idea of the chassis stiffness, and I never felt that there was any undue front end movement occurring.
100mm isn't a whole lot of travel, but the SID does an excellent job of managing those millimeters – there's enough give at the beginning of the stroke to smooth out the smaller trail chatter, and enough support at the middle and end of the stroke to suck up larger impacts without blowing through the travel. It feels almost invisible, which is the ideal behavior for a fork in this category, silently taking the edge off of obstacles while you focus on making it to the finish line ahead of everyone else.
Compared to RockShox's RS1, a fork that I spent a fair amount of time on last summer, with the SID it was easier to find that ideal balance of support and bump absorption. The fact that it's more adjustable and doesn't require a proprietary hub also sets it apart from its upside-down relative, and even though it may not have the radical looks, its weight and performance trump that of the RS1.
| It's easy to see the newest version of the SID becoming a hit with the dyed-in-the-wool XC crowd, and its performance might even sway some all-mountain riders to give an ultralight race whippet a try. - Mike Kazimer |
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Get on it, Fox!
I've serviced and worked on literally thousands of forks. There's no issue with how the topcaps are today. The added cost of the more intricate and not so common machining would result in a higher costing fork. Use the right tools.
Fork cap wrench. 8 Bucks. 20 gramms. Laser cutted for lowest tolerances.
Tested on fox 34 & 36 raw caps and pike black anodized one with no marks or scratch.
It will be funny for an XC racer to drag 200 gramms of cassette tool + wrench in order to field dial its air spring, don't you think ?
www.lunarbikes.com/tools.htm
Please check the link before you answer.
There is no way in hell a hexagonal interface, with only a few mm of height, & no overlap, is going to trump a 12 splined interface, with as much overlap as the depth of the cap can provide.
It's either you are trolling or are trying to defend some displaced logic. Either way, we all make mistakes. Have a nice day dude
www.pinkbike.com/photo/13432018
So I'm not sure that somebody with two left hands and some bad tools will not butcher the cap anyway.
Now we are talking about max 28 N.m torque on a 28 mm hex cap of 3 mm height for the Pike for instance, so don't you really think the classique interface is enough if you got the right tools (i.e. 28 mm chamferless hex socket at your workshop or the lunartool flat eyed wrench which work really, really well on the field)?
Do you really believe that the few professional xc racers are the main market for this fork ????
Check your own logic, dude.
Plus, most people don't have a de-champfered socket or one of the luna tools. But, especially with the advent of air spring tokens, almost everybody is going to want to take that cap off at some point. Because they have a tool that looks like it will work(a normal socket) they will try, they will mess up their topcap, & they will be pissed.
Contrast that with using the one tool that everybody has, because it's the one tool that hasn't changed for at least 20 years, even across MTB & road.
Now I've seen countless people harming themselves or destroying cheap cassette tool trying to get their cassette from free wheel for the same exact reason you cite : they don't have the right tool (like 9 mm cassette tool used for thru-axle + long socket + ratchet = failure) or bad quality tool etc...
The trick is effictively to have the right, good quality tool for the job and I don't believe that most of people have already what they need for the cassette-fork cap, so they have to buy it anyway.
And future will tell but I don't think from an engineering point that you can design a cassette tool as simple, cheap, light and efficient as XX mm ex interface like the lunar tool.
So from this point of view, I don't think that the new interface will be better, but it's only my opinion, no need to go farther in this discussion...
And are you really worried about 200 grams in your pack on your suspension tweaking ride? Bring 200mL less water.
If it's useless and can bring less weight, yes I am, like 200mL of water more.
I like when my suspension tweaking ride is not only a suspension tweaking ride ;-)
And depending where you ride it's difficult to find 5km test loops with all the conditions you need to dial your fork, either with a parking lot close behind. Particularly given the fact that this is an XC fork and XC crowd are not the most involved in the shuttle thing.
SID: Better damper, lighter, torsionally stiffer
RS-1: Constantly lubricated seals, laterally stiffer, sex
You can also run the RS-1 with regular hubs.
NOT GOOD!
I've thought about it for my next build, the RS-1 looks epic and rides stiff (oh yeah I'm into that), but I'm not into investing in a new hub standard quite yet. Going for a just as light carbon-free Fox SC, thank you very much.
@enrico650 I don't believe you can currently convert a normal hub for RS-1, unless you have a carbon ti x-hub.
Looks good. Completion is always fun.
I'm reading this and thinking about my 150mm 32 Talas
Wut...? Then what is the Revelation for?
https://www.nehannn.com/artist-detail/713.html?schrader !!!
2: Can it handle a 200+ fatty Cat 1 XC racer?
It's more expensive, heavier, and looks wak.
www.quietspeculation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Counting-Cards-640x250.jpg