Yesterday Tahnée Seagrave of Transition FMD Racing won her first elite Downhill World Cup in the Austrian Alps. Beating out World Cup leader Tracey Hannah by just over half a second on the hot & dusty Leogang course, Seagrave was riding an as yet unannounced prototype carbon DH bike from title sponsor Transition Bikes, which looks slated to supplant the alloy TR500 at the top of their gravity lineup. The team was cagey on locking down details a bit, but the new carbon TR11 looks to be a long travel variant of the GiddyUp Horst-link suspension that we most recently saw on the enduro Patrol Carbon & trail Scout Carbon. Join us after the break for a closer look and a number of concrete tech details…
A few of the key details – like the bike’s TR11 name and the 200mm of GiddyUp travel – come direct from decals on the bike that team mechanics didn’t want photographed. (One decal we didn’t really decipher was the 53? on the front of the seattube, just under the post clamp.) Transition isn’t ready to introduce the bike, so doesn’t want to give away too much.
Our guess is that since none of the other riders on the FMD team were racing the new carbon bike, Transition may have only finished the molds & production for this one size so far. The bike does look well finished though, so we expect that when it debuts it will probably be available in team blue or even in this same gray on black look, minus Seagrave’s name on the toptube.
So the first thing to note is that the new carbon bike appears to drop the adjustable geometry and travel of the single pivot alloy TR500 in favor of a lighter full carbon frame with the more vertical axle path of a true four-bar suspension design. That said, the upper link & shock layout is fairly similar to the TR500, versus the rocker arm & vertical shock orientation of all the current Transition GiddyUp mountain bikes.
The new TR11 gets 200mm of rear wheel travel with a high main pivot and mostly symmetric dropped chainstays. Those dropped stays, plus the curved seatstays both work to give Transition enough room for all that travel and big tires, while still letting them get bridges into the stay assemblies for rear end stiffness and keep the chainstay lengths as short as possible.
The Fox DHX2 coil shock on Seagrave’s bike had an interesting set of cooling fins stuck onto the shock reservoir to get rid of heat more quickly. Curiously it didn’t look to contact directly to the reservoir, so we suspect there was some special adhesive to fill that gap & ensure efficient heat transfer. Paired with the Fox shock was a Fox 40 Factory fork without any such obvious external mods.
The new bike looks to get fully external cable routing with tidy zip-tie guides front to back, ISCG mounts, and an integral downtube protector. Her bike had protectors on both the top & bottom of the driveside chainstay, but they looked more like a temporary deal than the finished solution.
For the overall build Seagrave was racing a full Shimano Saint drivetrain & 203mm Saint brakes, plus a set of 27.5″ DT Swiss EX471 wheels built on 240s hubs. Those wheels were wrapped with the newest Schwalbe Addix-equipped soft orange 2.35″ Magic Marys front & rear, with ProCore inside. Cockpit-wise she is running a PRO alloy Tharsis 9.8 stem, bar & seatpost, Ergon downhill-specific SMD2 saddle & GD1 grips, and Crankbrothers’ new Mallet DH pedals.
