Esker Cycles Releases Japhy Steel Hardtail 29er
PRESS RELEASE: Esker Cycles
Esker Cycles is proud to release our newest mountain bike model, Japhy. This latest offering is a steel hardtail 29er equipped with a 120mm fork. Japhy is designed and built to satisfy your adventurous side, and is right at home on your favorite flow trail. No-nonsense versatility combined with modern geometry and steel tubing—Japhy is the hardtail you reach for regardless of the adventure that lies ahead.
This latest addition to the Esker lineup expands on our current offering of the Orion Dynamics Suspension equipped models Elkat and Rowl, and complements our Hayduke model steel hardtail. With the addition of Japhy, we have now made it easy for riders to simply choose between two versatile hardtail bikes with the 27.5” Hayduke, or the 29” Japhy. For those riders that want to choose their own adventure, all Esker hardtails are also offered as frameset only, allowing anyone to dream up their own build.
Japhy is designed around modern frame geometry and custom steel tubing for a playful and responsive character out on the trail. With a 120mm fork and clearance up to 29x2.8, Japhy is ready to tackle everything from local singletrack to backcountry epics. In addition, Japhy features a 66-degree headtube angle, a 75-degree seat tube angle, an adjustable 425-437 chainstay length, and a reach of 420-490 on sizes S-XL.
The custom drawn Japhy tubeset is made from externally tapered, seamless, quadruple butted, heat treated 4130 cromoly that is specific to each frame size—making for a better quality frame while reducing weight and cost for the rider. This proprietary tubing design is the result of years of finding the limitations of off the shelf tubing, and opting to work with our talented manufacturing team to create our own tubesets that are custom made and fine-tuned for Esker bikes—giving riders one of the most sophisticated production steel hardtails available.
The intention with our hardtail models has always been to make it as simple as possible to set it up how you like, and hit the trail. For that reason, all of Esker’s steel hardtails continue to feature the versatile Portage dropout system, which was designed to allow riders to easily switch drivetrain types, hub widths, and chainstay lengths. Japhy comes standard with internal dropper routing, a plethora of braze-ons to attach anything that you can dream up, and external mix and match routing guides that mount to any of the existing braze-ons to allow riders to place external frame bags or cages, and tune their cable routing.
Japhy framesets come standard with Portage dropouts, an axle, seat collar, and a Wolf Tooth Components headset for $750. Complete builds are available in limited quantities in three levels starting with J1 at $2000, J2 at $2950, and J3 at $3250. Framesets and completes are available through eskercycles.com. For more information and complete specs, check out Japhy at eskercycles.com.
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Must Read This Week
And agreed.
Stanton Sherpa/Switch9er
Ragley Big Wig/Piglet
Canfield Nimble 9
Esker Japhy
Kona Honzo ST
Chromag Primer/Surface
Production Privee Shan GT
Etc
#steelisreal
Also would love to see a Hardtailparty review.
hopefully they send you a bike to review.
What's the max chainring size for non-boost?
Also wanted to commend on these guys on not going crazy with the fork length on this, can't hardly find any HT frames with aggressive geo based around a fork shorter than 140mm.
Actually, this bike would do just fine
I can't tell from the photos, but how reinforced are the chainstays where they are crimped for tire clearance near the bottom bracket? for instance is there a brace there? It's hard to tell. How thick is the tubing there? I only ask this because a few years ago I broke a steel Salsa El Mariachi here due to what i assume was a few years of hard torquing as a single speed rider. For reference, I'm only 155lbs so I'm not a Clydesdale by anymeans, yet I still managed to rip that tubing apart.
On our chainring and tire clearance dents, we are using a typical thickness there, but with some "secret sauce". Rather than increasing the thickness there, or adding plates or other reinforcement, we actually have that tube drawn custom for us, and then heat-treated. This is a departure from almost all other steel production bikes on the market that only use heat-treatment on the front triangle. We felt this was a better option than adding weight through reinforcement.
I would’ve bought 6 years ago, but I’ve gotta be honest. Hardtails with 65 degree head angles don’t get me hot and bothered anymore. I love the look and the way hardtails that are long, low and slaaaackkkk!
And this one looks beautiful to boot.
Do you have an european distributor,?
Thank you