The battle for lightweight trail bike fork supremacy just got a new contender. The upcoming MRP Ribbon SL shares the same chassis as its non-superlight sibling, dropping a couple of features and using careful parts selection to get under four pounds.
The Ribbon SL shares the same chassis as the standard Ribbon, but is 29er specific and comes with either 120mm or 130mm travel. It’s internally adjustable between the two, but doesn’t have the same range up to 160mm for the standard Ribbon. And that’s partly how they shaved weight. The regular MRP Ribbon comes in at 4.2lb. Their goal here was to drop under 4lb, which they did by shortening the stanchions, damper and air spring…as a start.
Then they gave it a bolt-on axle, because that saves more weight compared to a quick-release thru axle. It’s boost only, and compared to other options in the lightweight trail bike fork category, it beefs things up with 35mm stanchions. It also loses the Ramp Control Cartridge (RCC), which saves a few more grams…every little bit added up. The result is a mid-travel fork that comes in at a claimed 3.95lb (1,780g).
It’s available with 46mm or 51mm offset. You could technically put the standard Ribbon’s 41mm offset crown on there, and they can do it, but it’s heavier and you’d have to order it that way special or send your fork back in to have new stanchions pressed into that crown.
Retail is $899, compared to $989 for the standard version. Available in October.
The Raven is a new value-oriented version of the Ribbon, which comes in at $799 by using the same Ribbon chassis but loses the pressure release valve and RCC. It gets the bolt-on axle, too. So, it loses a few features, but has very similar performance. You’ll just have to use their Huck Pucks spacers to adjust the air volume. Also coming in mid-October.
