Eyes On: Ellsworth’s Updated Enlightment 29er, Carbon Stays & Dare DH Bike

Ellsworth’s Enlightenment 29er carbon hardtail gets more than just new graphics. They changed up the resins and molding process to make it stronger while dropping about 125 grams out.

They had the new Dare DH prototype and the new carbon shock stays on display, too…

The new matte carbon and white is (IMO) much better looking than the original glossy grunge-graphics-over-fishnet.

The inside tooling is now silicone, which lets them get really smooth with full 300psi compaction.

Internal cable routing is pretty interesting. It jumps out between the top tube and seat stays to ease installation. They’ll have plugs over the cable housing and hose at the entry and exit points for production.

The machined dropouts are done in house. It ships with geared dropouts, and single speed versions are available.

They’re in production now and should be available in about a month.

The new Dare will be lower and slacker, with many modern updates. The tapered headtube will accommodate Cane Creek’s AngleSet. This gives them a larger weld surface area, too, which is taken full advantage of with a new SST (shaped, schwaged tubes) downtube that has thicker tube walls at the head tube and gets thinner as it goes down. It’s also very shaped, as are the top- and seat tubes. The seat tube finally grows to 30.9, too.

This prototype will see tweaks to the head angle and BB height before getting into production in a couple months.

The new carbon seatstays for their full suspensions bikes save about 100g, quite a bit for just one piece on the frame. It’s available on the Epiphany, Moment, Evolve and Evolution. The latter two are their 29er full suspension bikes. Starts shipping in May.

As for 650B, Tony Ellsworth says their 29er has really great stand over for shorter riders.

“If you want the advantage of a larger wheel, go with a larger wheel,” Ellsworth said. “There’s no compromise with our 29ers.

“We could get a couple of our models to work with 650, and we may toy with it if the market really heads in that direction.”