Originally put into motion as a concept test mule, the 2013 Specialized Demo8 Carbon ended up surprising their engineers with its stiffness. Honestly, though, after seeing Trek Session and Santa Cruz V10 bikes take to the World Cup circuit in carbon fiber dress, it’s no surprise the Big S is bringing this out.
Like those bikes, the Demo8 uses a carbon front triangle with alloy in the rear. It’ll include ISCG05 tabs and gets a 3-position adjustable bottom bracket height.
Two models will be available, the Team Edition (above) and the Demo8 1 Carbon, plus an S-Works frameset. Both are running Rockshox Boxxer forks with 8″ and their dual seat stay rear triangle with 8″ of rear wheel travel. In addition to the all-new frame, they’re getting some new components to go with it. Bomb through the break for all the details…
The S-Works Team Edition frame uses Specialized’s top tier FACT 11m carbon, the Demo 8 1 Carbon gets the FACT 10 carbon and only a 50g weight penalty. Both use a new construction process that builds the front triangle in two parts, letting them tweak the molds better to put more material where it’s needed (like a 4mm thick bottom half of the downtube) and less where it’s not as critical or likely to take impact. They also bonded a forged alloy sleeve into the headtube and bottom bracket area to improve contact surfaces and durability for the rotating parts.
The Team Edition gets a magnesium shock link, the Demo8 1 gets an alloy link. From there, the shock has a slightly more forward mount, which gives the bike a more progressive shock rate. By swapping in an eccentric pivot for the shock or keeping the concentric one, you get three different effective bottom bracket height options.
The S-Works TE is 7.8 pounds (3.5kg) without shock, which is almost a full pound lighter than the alloy frame (0.9lbs to be exact).
The headtube is straight 1.5″ and the S-Works bike gets a Rockshox Boxxer World Cup with Black Gold stanchions. SRAM’s PR manager Tyler Morland told us this is not the DLC coating they’ve played with in the past. Rather it’s a “anodization treatment with a proprietary additive. We’re not ready to talk about all the features and benefits of it yet, but it does make it slipperier.”
The S-Works bike also gets custom DT Swiss FR600 on 240 hubs with the Specialized Butcher 2.3 tire providing grip.
Custom World Champ rainbow colors on the SDG saddle.
Renthal 6-bolt DM stem and handlebar round out the branded cockpit. Now you can rock a bike set up almost exactly like sponsored rider Sam Hill races around the world, including the custom 6-speed rear cassette with 9T small cog on custom DT Swiss hubs and Specialized freehub, along with a narrower 12×135 rear thru-axle.
What’s likely to be the better seller is the Demo 8 1 Carbon. It’s spec’d out the same as the alloy Demo8 1 (full spec list for both bikes at bottom).
The Demo8’s “sub seatstay” allows the FSR rear suspension to drive the shock from the chainstay. Specialized’s promo materials state this lets them better tune the leverage ratio, lower the center of gravity and maintain a stiff rear end.
The new Bennies pedals (named after USA factory rider Brad Benedict) have a concave alloy platform with a sealed bearing spindle. Definitely not as cool as the prototypes from Crankworx last year, but those haven’t been able to get into production from what we can tell.
The bikes get 8″ of rear wheel travel, controlled by the Fox DHX RC4 with adjustable rebound, bottom out and high and low speed compression damping.
New Sip Grips are designed in house and use a half waffle grip for cushioning up top and an aramid-infused lower section to keep the grips from getting shredded during failed shreds.
Pricing is yet to be announced, look for late summer availability. And if you want one of the Team Editions, order it up now…only 250 are being produced for the first year.
Click charts to enlarge.
Want more? Check out video and some pre-production drawings over at Pinkbike.
