Sea Otter returns to Laguna Seca this week and brands are frantically heaving out new gear trying to get ahead of the river rodent frenzy. The last 10 days brought major releases, or several major releases, from all corners of the mountain bike world. From new dampers (and gold forks) from Fox to revived legacy forks from RockShox, novel carbon-steel chainrings, new bikes from Rocky Mountain, Norco and Liv.
Here’s a breakdown of the most interesting bits that launched ahead of Sea Otter and what we make of the wave of releases as a whole.
Liv Intrigue X
Knolly Fugitive
Norco Range VLT
Bikes
The trend towards complexity to chase performance in mountain bike design continues. Rocky Mountain takes its Altitude from ovesized trail bike to dedicated enduro rig with the resurrection of its LC2R suspension. Liv gives the Intrigue X a significant boost in adjustability. Norco brings high-pivot to eMTB with the Sight VLT and Range VLT. Knolly has always pushed its Fourby4 suspension and, while the world tries to catche up to the Burnaby, B.C. brand, they continue to refine with the latest version of its Fugitive trail bike.
RockShox reverse-arch 32 with the new Grip SL damper
Marzocchi Super Z
RockShox revives the Psylo name and improves the Domane and Rudy
Suspension
Behind the bling of limited edition gold colour ways, there is a big boost in performance for riders that don’t want to fork out a mountain of cash for electronic or top-end analog suspension. While Fox upgrades its damper to the Grip X, it added new features to the Performance Elite-series destined Grip __, too. The XC crowd also gets a boost with the reverse-arch 32 TC and its Grip SL damper. At the other end, Marzocchi is reliving the glory days of freeride with the Super Z, a 190mm-travel single crown, cough, monster. Long live freeride! RockShox, after introducing a next-level Flight Attendant (with next level prices), added a trio of new and updated forks that ditch the electronics, and price, of FA for more traditional design.
Race Face is making partially carbon fibre chainrings for mountain bikes
Fox updates and lengthens the Transfer dropper post
Race Face adds bars in all the materials, all the rise and lengths and two very different price points
Gear
Long travel droppers go (more) mainstream, with Fox updating the Transfer dropper post to include a 240mm option. And there’s further acceptance of the 34.9mm post diameter standard. Which is good…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Canadian Cycling Magazine…