ENVE Composites has added a disc brake road fork to complement their disc cyclocross fork and standard road forks.
Shown here compared to their CX disc fork, it’ll come built similarly to their 2.0 road forks but with a wider 358mm diameter crown opening. That’s compared to 350mm on the 2.0, which is already pretty generous. That should make it great for “dirt road bikes” and those looking to do a little more adventurous riding without going to a cyclocross bike. With that in mind, you’ll see the first OEM spec of this fork on a Salsa bike coming late this summer.
When we did our factory tour a few months ago, this box just happened to show up. This was their final pre-production batch and, if they passed ENVE’s final in-house and third party testing, full production would start. Three forks were pulled out and immediately brought to their testing room (we didn’t get to see it, unfortunately), three were pulled out and reboxed to deliver to OEM customers for their own testing, and others were earmarked for outside testing. We were embargoed until now to show and tell.
It’ll be offered in 1.5 tapered steerer only. Like the CX disc fork, it uses a carbon fiber clamp band to retain the brake hose/housing. They pointed out that the clamp needed to be refined to fit better into the recess than what you see here.
Forward facing dropouts should prevent braking forces from popping the wheel out. Brake post mounts are designed around a minimum 160mm 140mm rotor.
Click to enlarge. There’s no brake hole molded into the crown, these are disc only.
Actual weight with uncut steerer is 438g. Standard road 2.0 fork comes in at 373g with straight steerer, so apples to apples might put a weight difference of 35g to 40g for the disc bits.
Axle to crown is 367mm, rake is 43mm with more options to come depending on interest). It should be available in August, retail is $487.
