What’s New for SRAM in 2007
The 2006 World Championships have come and gone. Three years of much anticipation for it to only fly by in a single action packed week. For riders, it’s the moment of truth, trial by fire, for spectators and supporters it’s the equivalent of schoolies week. If only I did a little less partying, I’d remember more of it…
Whilst racing is the main focus of the event, many companies use the opportunity to showcase their soon to be released products. With most of the mountain bike world’s media in the one place it makes sense. This year Farkin was invited to spend a weekend at the SRAM press camp held in Rotorua, an all expenses paid extravaganza that gave us the opportunity to check out all their new stuff (well, that and a lot of partying and some riding).
SRAM has come a long way in the last few years. The corporation now has Rockshox, Avid and Truvativ under their belt, which makes for a much more interesting set of products.
Rockshox
Big changes in the Rockshox lineup are in store for ’07. Perhaps the most notable of these is their venture into long travel single crown forks, a market that Fox, Manitou and Marzocchi have had to themselves for the last year. The late entry into the market does not seem to have had any negative bearing on the end product, Rockshox have done their homework and the end result is a set of three forks; Totem, Domain and Argyle. Not only that, each fork has at least two variations. All up that’s 8 new forks in total just for the Freeride segment alone!
Totem
The two other variations of the Totem include the 2-Step (2-step adjustable 135-180mm travel) and the cheaper Coil (180mm, fixed travel coil). Weights range from 5.9lbs of the Solo air to 6.3 for the Coil. All Totems have 40mm inner legs! That’s right, just as thick as Fox 40s on a set of single crowns!
As you can see they’re not aimed at the downhill race market, the lack of a dual crowns mean that the single crown needs to be built stronger and hence heavier than a typical single crown fork. Amazingly despite this, they have still managed to keep the weights lower than the Boxxer equivalents (Boxxer World Cup is 6.1 lbs).
So I guess it begs the question, why buy a single crown fork over a similarly weighted dual crown fork? Simple… X-Ups and Bar spins. Try that on your dual crown fork! Another reason I can see these being popular is that not everyone can afford to have two bikes (eg. downhill bike and hardtail), so putting a set of these on a do-it-all freeride bike makes a lot of sense. Being able to quickly reduce and increase travel makes for a good all round fork that performs in all areas.
Domain
Domain is the entry level freeride brother of the Totem. Thankfully having slightly lower specs it has a much kinder price tag. To help lower cost the Domain has 35mm steel inner legs that are from reports still very stiff but come at a small weight cost. The Domain comes in two models; 180mm and a U-Turn adjustable 115-160mm.
Lyrik
What is it with SRAM and their crazy product naming. They actually went to the trouble of explaining this one but I was too hung over to take it in. Sorry guys, though I’m sure you’ll live.
The Lyrik is described as beefed up Pikes with a few more tricks up its sleeves; 35mm inner legs like the Domains for extra stiffness, the new Mission Control damping system that allows you to adjust high and low speed damping independent of each other, and the ‘Flood Gate’ pedaling platform to name a few. Lyrik also comes in two versions: A 5.49lb 160mm travel ‘Solo Air’ and a 5.73lb coil U-Turn model (115-160mm travel).
Totem Solo Air | Domain 318 | Argyle 302 | Lyrik 2 Step
Avid
Big news this year is that wavy style rotors are out and have been replaced by the ‘G3 Clean Sweep’ design which is basically a round rotor with small cut outs for ventilation and mud/gunk clearing. We also see the addition of two new top end brakes, the Code and the Juicy Ultimate for DH/Freeride and cross country respectively.
Code
Massively over engineered (think XO of the Avid world) brake that is said to give 27% more braking power than the Juicy 7’s (with the same size rotor). The party piece has to be the three sealed cartridge bearings in the brake lever pivots to reduce friction (and in turn arm pump) for effortless hard braking.
Juicy Ultimate
If you are a weight weenie then these are for you. We were thrown a set of these in the presentation room and to say they’re light is an understatement! I know they’re aimed at hard core cross country but I couldn’t help but think they’d be at home on a super light DH race bike! SRAM don’t recommend these for DH or ‘All Mountain’ use, but I’m sure they’d be at good on a 4x bike where constant hard braking isn’t required. Weight of a single front brake with 160mm rotor is a mere 345grams.
Left & Centre: Code Caliper and Lever | Right: Juicy Ultimate Lever
Truvativ
Truvativ have two new products in the crank department this year, the Holzfeller OCT for Freeride/DH and the Noir for XC racing.
Holzfeller OCT
OCT stands for Open Core Technology, for us simple people it means hollow cranks! Not only is it 75 grams lighter, but 10% stiffer to boot.
Noir
The Noir consists of carbon fibre wrapped around a forged aluminium spine. The result is an 800g crank set (I can just see the weight weenies drooling).
Holzfeller OCT | Noir
SRAM
SRAM’s group sets have seen a shift this year for the better. The SX5 has inherited much of the features from last years X7 set, the X7 has got the old X9 specs and the X9 group set has become much closer the X0!
Perhaps the most exciting thing is that the X9’s shifter is almost the same as the X0 (which is way better than the old X9). It is much better to mount and just works better.
X9 Trigger
There you have it, a new year and a heap of new possibilities. One thing that is clearly shown by SRAM with their new lineup is that they haven’t been sitting on their hands. Almost all of their products have been altered or tweaked meaning that we all get better products for our dollar.
