New 2016 Fox 34 FLOAT 27.5+ goes wide to fit plus-sized mountain bike tires!

YESSSSSSSSSS

I was just thinking to myself that there were not enough standards out there. I’m glad Fox thought the same thing. This should go great with my new 155×16 rear hub. Haven’t heard of it, you say? Don’t worry, it will come… but only if you can afford it… gotta pay for all of that R&D somehow.

I’m a bit confused. I thought 90% of the “awesome” about 27.5+” was that they are about the same diameter as a 29″ tire? What’s the purpose of widening everything instead of just the cross brace of their current 29″ offerings. Could that little tweak not apply through all their forks without any standard changes?

I, personally, am not going to feel the 10mm wider hub. I barely notice the difference between a good 9mm skewer and 15mm.

https://bikerumor.com/2015/01/02/2016-axle-standards-part-2-mountain-bikes-get-15×110-road-gets-12mm-thru-axles/

I’m beyond even caring about changing standards any more :-/

Hooray for releasing 2016 product in April of 2015! What do their calendars look like at Fox?

Can we just start calling them “systems,” instead of “standards?” Truth in marketing. Some systems will play nice together, other times you will be out of luck.

Great point Vegan. Everyone was up in arms several years ago when manufacturers were too slow embracing 29″. Now everybody is up in arms that manufacturers are offering too many options.

This is interesting. It would be even more interesting if I could get a 36 version of this as well.
Lets just do an end around on Trek and screw the 12×148 idea they are pushing and go all the way to a 12x157mm. Wider bracing angles are good and very necessary the larger the wheels and sideloads get.

So conceivably I can get a new 29er 4+” travel frame with 12×157 rear that will accept 27+ and 29er wheels no problem. So I can go FAT when terrain dictates it and go skinny when it dries out. My wheels will last underneath my fatass as they pick up 10-20% added stiffness from the wider flanges.

My 15×110 wider fork will go either way and still have the 51mm offset needed to handle correctly. Still wish 20mm would come back. But I think this would be pretty trick.

Dave -where’s my frame?

chasejj,

I’m all about your idea there as long as the BB stay relatively narrow. I’ve been dreaming of a 160mm bike that I could ride with 275 DH rubber and a 180mm front fork at the park, then lower the travel to 140mm rear and 160mm front and run it as a long travel 29er, then in the winter swap on my fatties. Make that with an 83mm BB and I’d be happy. Make it relatively lightweight and reasonably priced and I’d buy one today.

Motorcycle is going to be less expensive than the super-bike that phella describes above and it doesn’t have a single piece of carbon on it so it doesn’t get broken when you slam it onto the ground.

Chris D,

Well actually progress was going from skinny quick releases to thru-axles and pretty much no one had an issue with that. It is “incremental” changes portrayed as ground breaking advances that have people cheesed. Imagine you just plopped down 6K on your dream ride and you have been waiting to rip it up as the snow melts. Oh wait your fancy new whip is last years news before you even got it dirty and the “standard” that you just bought is on the way out. Lame. Progress is tubeless systems and shocks that actually work. Not making the rear thru-axle 5mm wider. Lame.

Collin M, from your current wheel/tire combos it would appear that you see value in “better traction”. Yet in your post regarding “better traction” you seem to have a negative perception about going wider. If you don’t want better traction why are you riding any 2.25, 2.25 and 2.5?

My point is that there is a benefit to better traction and everyone can see the benefit otherwise they’d still riding 26×2.0.

About 1.5yrs ago I started riding 29+ and couldn’t stop smiling. Now I’m onto 26×4.8 riding XC with all the “skinny tire” people and just as fast as I ever was…but having even more fun now. A wider contact patch doesn’t nece mean it’s slower.

Tires of all cycling segments are getting wider. Until people are open minded and willing to try things they never know the pros/cons. Just asking people to be open minded.

The problem @pdxfixed, is that they have also pushed the caliper mount on the fork 5mm out. So while a 15×100 or a 20×110 have the disc mounted in the same spot, the 15×110 does not. So an all new hub is required to use this new “standard”. (deleted)

Ok last thing…by “trend” I don’t mean that completely in a bad way. There a little niche markets in the bike world. 27.5+ is one of them. I’m sure Fox thinks it is great that they are meeting the needs of a niche market. Again, they got burned by the 29er movement and their QC recently so they have good intentions. It is just that once their marketing people get a hold of it the talk of technological breakthroughs and 7% stiffer and blah blah blah gets to be more than a bit much. Just sell how cool biking is and stop with how high tech and expensive you can make the sport. I haven’t felt like I’ve been able to introduce a new person to this sport in years because they get sticker shock from overpriced bikes and parts along with the hot new thing changing from year to year.

@KJR Looks like I need to start manufacturing 5mm disc shims.

@Substance

I’m one of this 26″ folks. I’m not mad because thing are changing. That’s a good thing – evolution. Rather how it’s done. My bike’s frame has 4 years. The wheels are older and I would by glad to get a new ones. But now even the hubs wouldn’t fit in the next frameset. With Boost 148 crankset is a problem too!

Why when they invented X12 they didn’t make it wider? Or with the 15×100? Thats the only diffrence. The result? If your bike has 4 years almost nothing will fit in a new frameset.

@Substance- Your other line of argument conflates “new standards” and “innovation”. I have to take exception to that- it’s also a common argument in favor of new standards. Anyways, if you looked at my ideal bike (I don’t really ride much as I am extremely busy with work, so it would not make much sense to buy a new bike at this point) you would see it would have at least front suspension; it would have clipless pedals, 27.5 or 29 inch wheels, a short stem, and a front thru-axle- preferably 20mm, or maybe I would use a Lefty. It might have tubeless tires. I definitely would try them out. Depending on the terrain I would ride on, it might well have a dropper post. The frame would be carbon, or maybe titanium if it were a hardtail. I would want short chainstays. As you can see, I am not anti-tech. I am against just making something wider or bigger here or there without it benefiting anyone. It means that you can’t use the same parts farther down the road if you want to. But that’s a moral argument: “What bike companies are doing is wrong”. And we all know how much weight moral arguments have on Planet Earth: zero. They’re immaterial. Bike companies exist to make profit, and they happen to do it by selling bike stuff. And that’s life. We have to live with new standards, like it or not.
As for poverty- I don’t have a ton of money, but what I am waiting to trickle down to lower price levels is awesome suspension, light frame materials, the right size of wheels, light, grippy tires, and so on. Not a slightly wider rear axle or a bigger handlebar bulge, although those do have some benefits for sure.

like BBs cant we agree if its got 85% of the market its the ‘standard’ (singular– there can be only one) any less its just another format.

You know it isn’t actually a rule that you have to buy something the bike industry makes. I think, and I need to double check this…if you’re happy with what you have, that you can just keep riding it and leave the new(er) stuff to the people that want it. I love the new stuff, I buy all of it I can. I don’t care what trips your trigger no more than you care about what trips mine. I guess what I’m saying is (to those complaining about new standards), shut up.

@haromania

exactly, exactly, exactly!

I guess what I’m getting a little sick of is people going hulk on their keyboards everyday because the bike industry is improving things in the wrong way. Nobody has said that any of the wheel size, or axle type, or bb type(maybe not bb type), or headset type, or electric shifting, or electric suspension control, or whatever isn’t making things better. Bikes are getting better all the time. I would argue all of these things(including BB stuff) is making bikes better. Sure, the new stuff may not fit your old frame, but big deal. How long will it be before you buy a new bike anyway? Every time Ford comes out with a new Mustang, I guarantee that nobody says, “b.. but… but… why doesn’t the new suspension fit on my old mustang? I’m boycotting Ford forever!” Somehow this is a sentiment thats unique to the bicycle industry.

And while I’ve read this many times I’ve never actually heard it spoken out loud(probably because I work at a bike shop) that new standards make it harder for the local bike shop to survive. This is absolute garbage. People whined when 27.5 came out, “oh no, what will bike shops do? How will they stock some extra tubes and tires?” As far as axle standards go, bike shops don’t stock this stuff. QBP, BTI, J and B, Hawley, these are the guys that stock this stuff. When bike shops need it, they order it. New standards enter bike shops on complete bikes, not aftermarket parts. And if nothing changed bike shops would be having one hell of a time trying to sell you the same stuff they sold you last year, and 5 years ago, and 25 years ago.

Change is good. Stop whining. If you don’t like the new stuff stick with what you have, or theres always ebay. I bet you could get a 26″ wheel bike on there for real cheap.

@Substance- I can’t quantify the Karpiel guy’s strength compared to mine, but I don’t think he was far stronger; I didn’t have ogre-like power surging through my legs, but was pretty fit and strong. Maybe he was more so. The difference was mainly up to his bike from what I can tell. We had absolutely different bikes- but our strength levels were comparable. He openly admitted that a lot of his riding bravery came from the bike and not talent.
Yes, as you said there were both financial and technical reasons the bike industry didn’t have light, long-travel bikes earlier. I don’t think suspension technology was the limiting factor- the suspension he had was simple by today’s standard, but it sure as heck beat bikes with half the travel (“long-travel bikes” in the parlance of the day). In other words, suspension quality did not matter much. HAVING suspension with ACCEPTABLE quality did. I think it was no coincidence that that bike appeared just a year after Hayes introduced an industry standard for disc brake mounting. Discs made it possible to have longer travel bikes more than anything else…
What I take most exception to is your claim that all innovations are equal. 29 inch wheels are a much more important and beneficial innovation than widening a bottom bracket axle by a centimeter. 29 inch wheels improve my ride, making it faster and smoother. Going from a 20mm axle to a 15mm axle that weighs a few grams less has a negative, not a positive, effect on my ride. Press-fit bottom brackets that creak also make my ride worse. Some other standards, like wider bottom bracket axles, have little effect. Part of the proliferation in standards comes from the fact that bikes today are taking shapes and forms that allow them to do riding that was barely possible before. Snow bikes, fat bikes, long travel, lightweight bikes being the main categories. These bikes require, or at least greatly benefit from, new standards- much wider hub and bb axles are the most obvious examples. But not all of the new standards arise from this. Sometimes companies just make stuff so it doesn’t play with other stuff- 15mm thru axles (the “why bother” size is what I call it) and some companies make stuff just to make framebuilding faster and more profitable (for example, press-fit bottom brackets which yes, in fact, MANY people have real, not imaginary complaints about because they make noise). That is unfair, and that is life.
You also say you want the bike industry to be like the car industry, as if it were axiomatic that the car industry is a model for the bike industry. What is so great about the car industry other than that it is large and earns a lot of money? I ask that without sarcasm. Other people here don’t want the bike industry to be like the car one because the former until recently was based on nearly universal standards which allowed tinkering, garagemanship, and sharing of parts.
That way of making bikes is quickly fading into the past. Some people are unhappy about it, I being one of them to some extent. Yes, we can get old parts on eBay. I personally am not worried about new standards too much for that exact reason.
Telling people to shut up is rude and distracts people from the substance of your arguments, a substance which at times comes from reasoning but other times seems to be based on nothing more than conviction and unexamined beliefs (like the one about the auto industry) that underlie your arguments.

Last thing, for real.

I don’t think the tinkering has gone away. As far as the comparison to the car industry, the tinkering hasn’t gone away there either, its just changed forms a bit. I think thats happening to bikes too. If we are using a bike industry example, I think cannondale has it right with system integration. Its a marketing term for sure, but when you design more things to work specifically with something else bigger gains can be had in terms of performance. This is the case with cars too. The sharing of parts among different car makers might be a thing of the past, and again, if i implied that thats what I want for bikes it was unintentional. I want bikes to remain cross compatible in as many ways as possible, but I don’t think that BB standards and axle standards are changing bikes into cars. Think of how many bikes have interchangeable dropouts, and how with the right BB there are very few incompatibilities between frames and cranks. I bet every single mountain bike that costs more than $1k will accept the very fork talked about above with the right headset.

Perhaps some of that cross compatibility is disappearing, maybe when you tinker with your car you have to stick with stuff thats made by the same company or aftermarket stuff thats specific to your make. I really do hope that day never comes for bikes. It is going to take some way crazier things than axle or BB standards for me to feel like its coming though. If theres ever a time when stems, bars, pedals, derailleurs, saddles, bottle cages, brakes, and any number of things that can easily be swapped from bike to bike all the sudden can’t be, I’ll be very very unhappy about it. I bet others will let you know how they feel first.

@substance: “cross compatibility is disappearing,”

The industri will fight cross compatibility with claws and teeth since it’s impacting
directly at their own profit – with expensive spare parts (which may disappears after X years). As cars are today.

Sadly most of the people/customers indirectly “wants” these “new standards” since they’re not boycotting or rejecting these “new” standards/systems, most of peoples needs to experience the new creaking BB, fragile parts, the wiggly quickrelease, and the companies are still earning a lot of money of these mistakes most of peoples does. Hidden cost of maintenance and R&D are pushed to the customer and LBS.
In a way people feels that’s easier to buy a new bicycle/system than to build a new one from parts. What will happen to the bicycle in 15 years?

I have a square BB. It’s still smooth running after seven year of zero maintenance.
And I ride a lot, in rain and snow. When it breaks downs, it’ll take me a 10-20 minutes to switch it out, so I can ride out and earn more money as soon as possible.

Look at a bicycle as a income, when it’s broken, you’ll loose the value of joy.
Love it as a mistress, keep her happy with gifts of maintenance, be cheap to make you happy, punish her if she breaks down. That’s what I do. 🙂