We’ll admit two things about the upcoming 2010 Santa Cruz Tallboy 29er:
1) We’re surprised as heck to see it given Santa Cruz’s comments on our 29er DH post and on their engineering guy’s own blog, and…
2) We’re a little late to the game on posting this.  It’s been in the wild for a couple weeks now, depending on who you talk to.
So, to make up for the latter, we’ve accumulated lots and lots of pics, specs and details for your viewing pleasure.  Here it is, the 2010 Santa Cruz Tallboy 29er.  It’s a carbon-fiber frame with next-generation VPP pivots that have grease ports and angular contact bearings, aluminum pivot axles and titanium hardware.  It’ll come in four sizes, from Medium to XXL, and it’s light!
Hit ‘more’ for all the goods…
QUICK SPECS:
- 100mm travel
- VPP suspension linkage w/ grease ports
- Titanium hardware
- Aluminum pivot axles
- Carbon Fiber frame
- 17.5″ chainstay length across the size range
- Availability targeted for October delivery
- Pricing TBD
THE BITS AND PIECES:
The Tallboy will be Santa Cruz’s third carbon fiber bike, and they say they’re becoming more enamored of the material.  Click on any of these images to enlarge:
The bottom bracket area where the BB shell will be bonded in.
The seat tube section, with the molded-in upper pivot mount.
The rear triangle.  The right side shows the chain guard.  On the left is a clever little touch, a metal rotor guard to keep your brake rotor from scratching/nicking the frame.  Santa Cruz will actually start sticking these on all frames shortly, and they’re available for retro-fit, too.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER:
This mockup is unrideable, but shows what the frame will look like (mostly…it is still in prototype phase).  Note the very short headtube, a tapered 1-1/8″ to 1-1/2″ tube that houses an inset upper bearing.
The bike is built with 100mm travel. Santa Cruz claims it’s super stiff, testing stiffer than their 26″ Blur XC, and just slightly less stiff than their Blur LTc.  If it can match a well-respected XC bike like the Blur in stiffness while having the larger wheels, it should be good.
Frame weight is pegged at right about 5lbs with shock, making it pretty darn light…which you can see can be easily built up to a bike that weighs on par with an average 26″ wheel mountain bike:
Almost 27 lbs, but here’s the deal.  This bike ain’t built light as you’re seeing it here:
That Crank Brothers Joplin seatpost alone is 534g (1.17 lbs).  Put a 250g (average) Thomson seatpost in there and you just dropped over 1/2 a pound.  Swap the Candy pedals for comparable Eggbeaters and drop another 30g.  Santa Cruz said the wheels in this pic aren’t super light, and the seat is a CroMo railed piece.  In otherwords, getting this bike down to 25.5lbs shouldn’t be too hard or terribly expensive…and it remains to be seen what built kit SC will offer on the bike.  (BTW – That’s a size Large bike in the pic.)
You can keep yourself up to date here (we promise…no more late entries on this bad boy) or by watching the Santa Cruz blog.
