Cane Creek’s Double Barrel Air is no longer a secret. We grabbed some detail and cutaway photos and real weights at Eurobike. They also had their new tapered AnglesSet adjustable angle headset to work with tapered forks, and the Gary Gauge gets official, too.
Other than swapping the coil spring for an air can, the dual compression and rebound damping design is like their original DB shock. To see how they test them and how it works, check out this post from our factory tour. Click through to see it all…
The Cane Creek Double Barrel shock has long been at the top of downhill riders’ wish lists because it allows for separate high- and low-speed compression and rebound damping, letting you fine tune the shock for any frame with less reliance on “factory tunes” that are set before you ever get it. This means it’s easy to swap from frame to frame if you tend to go through them with greater than average frequency.
Cane Creek admitted this was a few grams heavier than their 500g target, but given the type of bike it’s going on (freeride, DH), half an ounce isn’t an issue. That, or this was one of the larger sizes – there are eight eye-to-eye and stroke sizes available.
The parts are all precision machined, just like their high end headsets. The air canister has a large diamieter with internal main chamber and extra capacity around the outside. The negative air chamber auto adjusts, likely with a similar check valve design like Fox and Rockshox.
Now that they’ve got this project out of the way, we have a feeling a totally revamped Cloud Nine XC air shock might be in the works. The original enjoyed some OE spec on brands like Gary Fisher before being eclipsed technologically by the other brands. If they can take some of the adjustability of this new DBAir and put it into a smaller, lighter shock, they could have a winner.
This was mentioned as a coming product when we talked with Banshee earlier, we just hadn’t seen it yet. So, now it’s offiical: Cane Creek has a tapered option for the AngleSet.
The Gary Gauge, another item we saw during our factory tour, is finally finalized and ready for primetime. Given the abundance of headset and headtube standards and sizes, this tool makes it easy to measure all of them to see what you’ve got or what you need. Super simple and cheap solution.
