While we don’t have a whole lot more “news” on the prototype Cannondale Lefty forks or the expected new Mavic 29er wheels since our original posts (here and here), we do have more photos that seem to show a few details.
At left (click to enlarge), the lower stanchion does actually look round rather than hexagonal. Yes, the pic’s a bit dark and the focus seems to be on the jeans rather than the fork, but appearances do seem to confirm what Jeremiah Bishop told us. If it holds true, it means there must be some sort of internal keying mechanism to keep it from rotating, or it simply gets some hard edges further up inside the leg. C’dale’s marketing rep Bill Rudell says the needle bearing strips are about 4″ to 5″ long inside the leg, but typically this would be placed just inside the outer leg to prevent fore/aft/lateral play. It’ll be interesting to see how they did it.
Cannondale is set to launch their 2013 bikes in July, and we’ll be there to cover it. Assuming this “fork” makes it into the 2013 model year, we’ll get the low down…possibly earlier.
More pics after the break, one which clearly shows their X-Loc hydraulic lock out, something they’ve offered for a while. Another collabo they’ve been running with Rockshox is the Solo Air system, but as Bishop told us, he’s heard the internals are changed, just doesn’t know how.
Check the pics, some of which have pretty good shots of the purportedly new Mavic wheels, and leave a comment if you see anything we missed!
Photos are from Cannondale’s team camp. Above, the complete bike, below, the close up crop.
About the only difference we can see other than hub color and the obvious fact that it’s for a Lefty, is that the rim looks to have a slightly taller sidewall with slightly shorter mid-section between the ISM spoke bed and sidewall. What we noticed on this and the prior pics we posted was that the rim is all black with only their smaller decal…but, the top pic in this post shows a black hub with more traditional C29SSmax stickers. Perhaps they’re bringing two spec levels out, a top level race version and an “everyman’s” model for 29ers. That would certainly help expand their market share potential since there’s just one option now. Our bet is there’s even a third “budget” offering.
Air valve is clearly visible on the bottom of the fork leg.
