WAKi-Leaks - Non Electronic MTB Suspension

Every year just after the Sea Potter Cycle Fashion Show, the biggest heads in MTB industry meet in a fancy restaurant, 275, in San Diego, CA, where they discuss how can they join their efforts to manipulate the market and carefully choose what they will put into the hype-pipe. This is exactly where the 650B conspiracy took place 4 years ago! In 2014 the theme of the conference was suspension, hence the code of the meeting Suspi-Con. I managed to dress up as a waiter to infiltrate the secret meetings and here are some of the things I found out inside. To my surprise, there was relatively little electronic stuff planned for the future, at least on day 1 where I saw a series of lectures from Rock Fox and Cannon Rail, presenting their latest R&D programs. Someone from MoonTour said that electronics will be discussed in Germany on Eurobike. So here we go!

Standard upside down, fork hybrid called EN-Forche 1

Hybrid is the cool word among people believing in inevitable painful death of our grand children due to many subsequent environmental disasters caused mainly by beef and oil. Therefore Rock Fox will have something for the people aware of the trends: En Forche 1. A hybrid of an upside down and a standard fork, built for no one else but Enduro and AM riders. From what I have learned, it will have 160mm of travel coming in a two stage design. The lower USD part of the fork will take care of the smallest bumps while the upper section will take care of the big hits. There are separate compression and rebound adjustments for each part, offering virtually limitless setting options, so that you can tune the fork EXACTLY for the trails you ride and your riding style, whether it is expressive or progressive. To top that EF1 has two springs, titanium coil in the lower section and air in the top, but the most impressive part is that thanks to such a unique design it can take ALL wheel sizes. There is not a single troll that could argue with such mix. If they only hit the price and weight point right, then that will be brilliant! The Rock Fox product manager says that this design utilizes the best sides of both current fork designs. There is one last trend that this fork addresses and that is the recent fab in bike geometry: long frame reach, short stem. EF1 uses a reinforced carbon steerer with a cut out that makes room for a super short 25mm TrueNative stem, both being a part of the CGS, Cool Geometry System. The structure of the whole fork is designed to work with head angles slacker than 66 degrees.

The new, super adjustable shock from Rock Fox, the Quadro Barrel aka Woody

A second product I saw from Rock Fox is their uber-adjustable air shock: Quadro Barrel, aka Woody. Usage is anything from Trail to DH. It is has two reservoirs and a master valve that chooses to let the oil flow through into one of them depending on size and characteristic of a hit. The master valve is fully adjustable, so are the low and high speed compression valves, beginning and ending stroke rebound valves at each reservoir. Master valve can also provide a lock out. Again, all that in the name of optimization, for people really needing a large adjustment range to set the suspension EXACTLY as they know it should be set for the conditions on the track. Just like En-Forche 1, the Quadro Barrel hosts a CGS features and the first of them is an oversized eyelet allowing you to mount a large offset bushing to slacken the head angle and lower the bottom bracket to give you the ultimate trendy geometry. The second CGS feature is the adjustable shock stroke that... allows you to set it EXACTLY as you want in case the stock setting is not good enough. In terms of adjustability Woody beats the famous Pain Creak CPDLFS-Air-DH4bs shock.

The other presentation I saw was from Cannon Rail. They are currently developing two forks, Hefty and All Righty. Both designs express the new way of thinking in the company, going away from their ordinary series of forks: Leftist. The Hefty sports a single crown architecture with a carbon, steerer/crown, upper legs monocoque. This particular fork is aimed at all long forgotten types of riding, that is off-road cycling, where you just get out and ride a bike in the woods as if the internet didn't exist. As opposed to the orgy of dials found in En-Forche, Hefty adjustments have been minimized to rebound and reservoir pressure. The second fork is All Righty which has much weirder architecture. Cannon Rail performed a 5 year research that has proven that most World Cup XC racing tracks in the world are right handed loops, therefore fork flexing in this way will help win vital time on tracks with majority of right hand corners...


Unfortunately, my true identity has been discovered just before I entered the presentation by Shmox suspension shocks, after I dropped a bottle of the best Chardonnay on Gary Fletchers foot. I was escorted away from the premises where the Suspi-Con took place, therefore I cannot bring you any details on what Shmox is planning in order to take our money, I only overheard that they are working on a three stage, telescopic USD fork "Yamato" and they are planning to sell it with loose shim stacks including Signature series Shim stacks like Geeman, Peet or Shladming.

Thank you for reading,
Arguably Yours,
Wacek Kipszak

Waki-leaks on Facebook
waki-leaks.blogspot.com

Installment#1 Sheman-OH SaintEN
Installment#2 Sheman-OH Xtroll
Installment#3 SPAM XE1l
Installment#4 Spirit of Enduro
Installment#5 2x2 Zoopa Drive
Installment#6 Trike Aero-kit

Special thanks to Dingus for inspiration, always laughing at your jokes man

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Disclaimer: This article is meant to be a satire. My very intention with it is to entertain you and eventually provide some food for reflection in case we treat our sport a bit too seriously. I honestly do not wish to insult or harm anyone or any company. Eventual resemblance to persons, names and places might be coincidental.

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