With promises of more info to come over the next couple months, Formula gave us an early look at their new Selva enduro suspension fork and upcoming 4-piston Cura brakes. Both are prototypes, but are close to production level with minimal (if any) material changes expected before they go into production. We expect full details for the fork around Sea Otter Classic in April, and the brakes a bit later. But we do have some initial info and images, which let us make a few educated guesses…
The new Selva will be built on the current Selva’s chassis, and their folks say the coming updates will all be retrofittable. So if you have a Selva now, you can drop in the new internals and get your fork fully modernized. It maintains the main positive air spring…
…but swaps in an air spring for the negative, replacing the current dual coil spring negative. This lets you fine tune initial feel, and it’s only part of the new spring design that’s coming. The rest? That’s still top secret, but they seem really, really excited about it and its ability to make their air spring feel more like coil. As pumped as they are on it, though, they’re keeping all other details secret until the formal debut.
We suspect the damping cartridge will remain unchanged as they’ve already paid a lot of attention to its tuning capabilities. Their CTS (Compression Tuning System) inserts let you choose the right compression circuit for your weight, riding style and conditions.
On bottom is a standard low speed rebound knob. Watch the Bikerumor Friday Yard Sale episode #10 to hear Formula’s Vittorio Platania explain the new fork and brakes in person.
The Cura 2-piston is, in their words, the only 2-piston brake to be used in pro World Cup downhill bike races. So, it’s light enough for winning marathon race bikes, but strong enough for DH. They say it was made with a single goal in mind…stopping bikes. The four piston model builds on that by offering riders that peace of mind (or just aesthetics) that a four-piston brake provides. We saw a very rough prototype of the new Cura 4-piston prototype at Eurobike. It was tested under Loic Bruni during his 2017 world championship run in Cannes.
These much more polished versions were rideable, as evidenced by the small rocks that had been thrown into the pad slot. We rode them, full ride report coming soon.
Note the new rotor design, too.
Formula’s current rotors use a “drilled” braking surface full of round holes. They say this new design is quieter and a tiny bit thicker, which takes advantage of the Cura’s longer pad retraction (compared to their other brakes).
To be called the Cura 4, it uses the same master cylinder/lever as the regular Cura, which has a tooled reach adjust. There’ll also a new Cura G with the same 4-piston caliper, but a new master cylinder and lever that gets tool-free pad contact and reach adjustments. Stay tuned…
