By now, we’ve reviewed both the original carbon Renegade Elite and the steel Renegade Exploit road bikes, both earning high praise. Now, they’ve made them even better by switching to flat mount disc brakes, adding rack and fender tabs to the fork, multiple-choice thru axle formats, stealth dropper post routing and more.
They also tweaked the rear seatstay-to-dropout junction to give the axle a little more leverage in flexing the stays. That translates to improved compliance, both on the carbon fiber and steel versions. Ride on down for more details…
Starting at the back, the new modular thru-axle system is quite clever. By using alloy inserts, they can adapt the bike to all three major thru axle standards:
The inserts are used on the fork and the rear dropout, both based on the 12mm size.
The switch to flat mount brakes cleans up the design. The dropout extends upward from the axle for a bit, pushing the seatstay’s end point up and back slightly. Combined with the lower seatstay placement on the seat tube, the result is better leverage to flex the flattened seatstays over bumps. New rack and fender mounts are stuck directly on the side of the frame rather than using the hidden design from before.
The Jamis keeps the massive bottom bracket section to drive all of your power rearward with no lateral flex.
Another change is a hidden seatpost binder bolt for a smooth, flat top surface. Hidden inside the frame is routing for a stealth dropper seatpost.
The steel Renegade Exploit gets all the same updates, which we’ll use to show off the front end.
A new fork is sleeker and simpler looking thanks to the flat mount brakes. A small fender mount bolt hole still resides on the back of the dropout, plus two new rack mounts sit on the sides of the legs. Another mounting hole sits on the front and back of the fork’s crown, giving you options for mounting multiple items.
The flat mount disc brake spacer bolts on from the bottom and gets cotter pins on the tops of the bolts as an extra precaution. Shimano also provides wires to run through the adapter mounts on some parts, which loop through holes in the bolts to prevent loosening.
Curious how to use all those mounts? This one’s a good example.
