Spy Shot! Prototype ENVE Carbon Rigid 29er Mountain Bike Fork (UPDATED!)

Am I missing something here?

1. How can you reverse the offset? Flip the fork and have the brake on the wrong side?

2. Is the brake hose routed internally? Why route a front hose internally? That does not make sense in my world.

3. It looks multilayered at the fender area. This is a good place for stress and cracking.

I love ENVE products, but I don’t like this.

If this is priced anything like their bars and seat posts it’ll retail for $800

Knard clearance?

@9nerd, there are removable alloy ‘chips’ in each fork leg, they can be removed and flipped 180° to get the other offset. The brake routing is still external, but hides under a carbon ‘clip’ built into the fender (see their current road/cross disc forks).

What I wonder is how this flip chip affects the brake position. Is it a 140 post mount in 43mm mode, and a 160 post mount in 52mm mode?

Guessing the 29+ 3.0 Knard will work fine on the Enve. Building a 29+ w/ this tire and it fits the Niner carbon fork fine compared to a suspension fork w/ almost no clearance.

@Jack : That was my first thought. Definitely needs a non-suspension corrected version. The fender looks kind of silly.

looks nice…looks expensive

a bunch of those stupid niner rigid forks will hit ebay once this is available.

@Grind

Y’know, they’ve made quite a few mtn and cross products for sometime now. So, another US made thru axle carbon forks is on the market. That makes, what, one?

“ideally, the offset chip would be perpendicular to a line bisecting the axle and center of caliper, so as to not need a brake adjustment afterwards.”
that would mess up the geometry. it may be the brake adapter that flips 180 to account for 9mm of axle movement. just a guess. nice idea, GT had it on steel forks 20 years ago and it was a nice tweaker feature then.

is the brake adaptor what changes to accomodate the different rotor positions? That’s not an avid post mount adaptor. Can’t think of any major brands adaptors that have that m180-1 model.

alb – it’s a prototype. I’d dare say this is US made. ENVE usually sneaks some cool stuff out at NAHBS but production follows some months later.

@alb: Perhaps you should call Enve and ask where their forks are made rather than just guessing.

do us all a favor and clear the air if you care about speculation so much

My guess after seeing these at NAHMBS is that Knard clearance would be tight. No way with fender in place. May work without fender but I think the sides would be close. IF had a custom painted one which made it look the best. But if is still kind of ugly IMHO.

“I don’t get the fender haters.”

The issue with this silly “fender” is that it’s purely cosmetic, as it’s too short to actually do anything other than support the brake cable. Why bother with the added few grams and cost compared to a simple cable guide?

Fenders that are large enough to work are another thing entirely.