RockShox Updates Sid, Reba, and Pike for Boost, Plus New Entry Level XC 30, Paragon Silver Trekking Forks

So. What’s the good news about the 2016 lineup? It would make the whole bitter pill of wider dropouts easier to swallow. And also, aren’t the Sid and Reba due to get an accelerator/charger damper ?

Andrew, it sounds like you are a bit of a luddite. If anything the move to 148 and 110 spacing and moving hub flanges away from the center line to give better bracing angles for building stronger wheels is the most significant improvement in wheels in a long time. Why would you be against the ability to build a stronger wheel?

I honestly don’t think you’re going go notice a difference in stiffness between a 142mm rear wheel and a 148mm rear wheel. Probably even less than you’ll notice the 100mm vs 110 in the front.
I’m a big guy, and I have been happy for decades with 100mm front and 135mm rear hubs. I have got to agree, I’m all for progress, but this seems more like planned obsolescence than a huge improvement.
Sure, it’s probably a bit better, but not enough that I want to buy a new bike for it. I guess as the bike industry gets more and more popular, there is room in the market to justify all these new standards.
Unfortunately, I can’t buy a new bike (or even wheels) more than every 5 years or so, so it’s a good thing I’m happy with my “obsolete” standards.

I seriously hope Trek’s push for this fails. Seriously…every d*mn company out there is trying to set a “standard” that lasts for a couple years. This smells too much like a marketing gig more than anything. Can’t have sales go stale now, can we? Global marketplace rules!

Well, Jake, I think Andrew was pretty clear about that when he said “speed of obsolescence for small incremental benefit”. He’s right.

The industry already had the 150/157 standard so the Boost rear change doesn’t seem to offer anything we didn’t already have. Regarding the front, Is the wheel’s stiffness such a problem that we need a mere 10% increase in width that the new 110 spacing offers? Neither of these changes passes the sniff test.

Frankly I see no value in these Boost changes at all. Why would I “be against the ability to build a stronger wheel”? When, Jake, did you stop beating your wife?

I could build stronger wheels than I do today but I don’t need to. If I did, I’d rather have a different standard that offered gains that Boost does not. Meanwhile, wider hubs place greater demands on the frame and fork. It’s not clear to me that Boost is a step forward in any way.

157mm… its been around, there are already bikes using this, i dont understand why not use something already in production and follow what this gentleman has already done. –> https://bikerumor.com/2015/03/08/nahbs-2015-quiring-boosts-29-mountain-bikes-beyond-148-w-clever-parts-use/

@Jake – Did you just call him a Luddite after he stated he wasn’t? Is Luddite the vogue bike nerd insult?

While 15×110 might make a stiffer wheel by x.x% so do several other methods that do not require a hub standard to be developed and then pushed on consumers.

We aren’t Luddites. We are smart enough to take current products and make them work great and have no complaints. The trend setters who want to tinker with parts or discuss their improvement theories online (rather than just ride their bikes) love this industry nonsense.

@Colin McCaleb: in all fairness, just because someone says they aren’t something, doesn’t mean they truly aren’t. I don’t think Andrew seems like a luddite, but I’ve met some people through my years that prefaced some pretty hateful things by saying, “I don’t hate group x” then goes on to spew hate toward that group.

“Standard” 15×110 axles? Excuse me!

I’m not going to voice any support or disdain for the new ‘standards’, but I do want to point out something about the 15×110 front hub specification: Saying it has no benefit relative to 20×110 is false. 20×110 hubs keep the disc brake and spoke flanges at the same spacing from center as 15×100. This is why hub manufacturers can make one hub fit 9×100, 15×100, and 20×110 just with different end caps. On the other hand, 15×110 spaces out the disc rotor, and with it the spoke flanges can move out as well. This means that a 15×110 wheel can be built stiffer than a 20×110 wheel, all other things being equal.

@Everyone–planned obsolescence has been a part of the bike industry for decades, of course the engineering and marketing departments calls this progress/better design. Very little the consumer can do about it except let the early-adopters be the guinea pigs. Ambivalence is the key to happiness, sigh.

If its not broken, don’t fix it. I am perfectly fine with the current standards, just use an offset drilled rim if bracing angle worries you so much. I do hope Trek fails this push as well. We riders don’t need a new standard that makes our $3000 frames and $1000++ wheelsets obsolete.

If you look at the bike as a system, there is some validity to the Boost standards. A couple mm increase here and there can be a great thing when it comes time to design things like a new suspension design. I think the 110 front end makes a heap of sense (albeit way too late in production cycles for component manufacturers) but I am of the mind that going with a 157 OLD and 83mm BB shell on the frame would have opened up the design envelopes even greater than the Boost design while still allowing for a wide variety of more available components and keeping overall industry manufacturing costs in check. While dedicated xc riders may have felt peeved about it, the majority of us who just ride would have had no real issue. Additionally, it would offer even better bracing angles for the spokes and more than enough clearance to fit the fattest of the + series tires almost regardless of suspension travel. The fundamental tenets of the Boost designs are valid, but the overall execution does leave something to be desired in the minds of consumers. Hopefully Trek is left to fester with the Boost back end the way that Giant was left with OverdriveII, while other manufacturers pursue the 83mm/157mm frame program. Won’t hold my breath though.

‘course theres validity to the boost “standard”.
but in 2 y they’ll use 157 or 200mm. why not now and keep it for years? because money, thats why.

At what point does making a marginal improvement in wheel stiffness become more important than ensuring that bike shops aren’t faced with an SKU and stocking nightmare? Or that consumers aren’t made to feel that their “superbike” from 6 months ago is now an obsolete pig with inferior technologies?

This new standar…er, system seems like too little late. This should have been addressed when 15mm fronts and 142mm rears where being introduced, or not at all.

ShopMech –
I think the ‘boost’ standard allows the wheel to be made stiffer laterally as well as improving the hub to bike/fork interface, which is another flex point. Going to 1x specific frame designs may allow a stiffer frame, but do not address these flex points.
That said, I do not know what is more beneficial (stiffer frame vs stronger wheels).

I do think a bike frame can become too stiff laterally, as some flex is required since current suspension only operates in one plane, while bikes are leaned at all angles. Motorcycle frame manufacturers realized this as racing frames (motoGP) became stiffer and stiffer. On bumpy tracks, riders complained of traction issues when leaned over.

There’s not a single rider out there that can honestly say they notice the performance differences (aside from maybe the shifting) between 142/148 and 100/110: I don’t care how much testing they cram down our throats, how strong of a rider you are, or how much people buy into the hype.

Unfortunately, the bike industry is starting to reach a point where the performance gains in new product launches are extremely marginal, so we’re seeing little tweaks here and there such as new axle standards.

You don’t buy this because of the performance advantage, you buy this because of the slight chance it may become a new standard in the future. This will make your bike more modern, more appealing for resale, and more “standard.” The only catch is you’ll have to wait at least a year to see if it actually sticks as the new standard.

Just to throw something out there –

I’d assume lateral stiffness of the wheel hub to drop out interface is primarily accomplished by the axle (on a thru axle set-up). I could see how the increased surface area provided by the “torque cap” system would help a QR, but I am not seeing how it would greatly increase the stiffness of a well made (i.e. to tolerance) thru axle system. It may help decrease stress riser on the hub and dropout, and negate slop issue on the thru axle (manufactured or wear) but I am not fully buying the “stiffness increase”. It would seem a better idea to make the thru axle longer and the mating surfaces in the fork and hub wider to provide more contact area.

I went for a ride today, but I didn’t even enjoy it on my 15 and 142 axles.

Stuff these new standards. I’ve just built a fat bike frame with sliding dropouts so I can run 29er, 26×5″ fat, 650b+ and 29er + on a 197mm thru-axel rear hub. Front is 150mm thru axel.

I don’t think anybody in the above comments is making the complaint that they think new standards* don’t improve performance. Rather, they are worried that if they bought a new bike a couple of years back and need say, a new fork, that all this (seemingly built-in) obsolescence is going to write off an otherwise perfectly good bike just because of parts availability. And I’m with them. I have a fantastic hand made steel bike in the shed and always I think to myself that I hope I don’t break the forks, because my steerer is 1 1/8th and they’re 120mm – so my choice is getting more and more limited. Not only that, but it’s got those bizarre wheels that make you a really slow rider apparently.

*Let’s not call them ‘standards’ any more. Because they’re anything but standard.

I don’t need to ride the stuff to know that the bracing angle of the spokes on a 29 inch wheel will not be materially changed by a 2.5mm difference in the spacing of each flange from the centre of the hub.

I will say it again, just so that something else can go in some ears and out of the other. I don’t dispute the marginal performance gains. My issue is that the marginality of the gain does not warrant the hype or the speed of the change to yet another standard so soon after many people have invested in last season’s emperor’s new clothes.

I do accept that nobody is forced to buy this stuff, but at a certain point it will make many otherwise serviceable kit obsolete for a very small performance gain.

good call SRAM, those forks didn’t need the Charger dampers….

Keep changing the standards and I’ll just save a couple thousand on my next ride by buying a competitive dirt bike.