Niner’s new “RDO Carbon” debuted on the BSB cyclocross bike and immediately found a home on the JET 9 RDO, too. It’s a new manufacturing process for them that uses rigid molds on the inside to allow for tighter compaction, less resin pooling and smoother interior walls. The result is a frame that’s more fine tuned, stronger and a bit lighter.
Now, the RIP 9 RDO gets the new construction along with this matte white frame color accented by green logos and (available) color matched components. The matte/gloss black colorway is still available, too. Unfortunately, looks like that brilliant blue is gone, baby, gone…
While the JET 9 RDO claimed a roughly 70g weight loss with the new construction method, Niner says the RIP 9 RDO only sees a “couple grams” loss, but the aforementioned benefits like smoother ride and stronger frame are the real story.
The RIP 9 RDO’s current frameset was introduced in 2012 and added features like a bottom bash guard on the lower linkage, removable ISCG05 mount and a bump n rear travel to 125mm. It also added full 1″ bearings to stiffen things up. In our own testing, the frame has been quite versatile and tough, working very well with everything from a 12omm fork for XC style ripping and a 150mm Fox 36 for big mountain crushing.
Framesets are $2,899 with shock and hardware, including seat collar and rear Maxle.
Six complete bike builds will be available:
Complete bike pics for the lower three spec builds were grayed out, suggesting new MTB groups are coming soon…something we’ve heard rumor from a third, unrelated source, too. Unless the spec is a decoy, though, it looks like maybe things are staying 10-speed for the groups? UPDATE: Shimano says nothing new is planned, and Niner confirmed that they simply didn’t have parts in to do studio shots before they wanted to send out the news. Oh well.