The new Banshee Prime is a burly new 130mm 29er designed to do anything a 160mm 26″ bike can do.
It’s being tested by a number of riders, so numbers are still being finalized, but it’s looking at about a 68° head angle.
The hydroformed 7075 alloy frame has internal ribbing inside the stays to keep it laterally stiffer, particularly important for a 29er. It uses full titanium hardware throughout the pivots. It’s a modified VPP design that ends up pushing the shock pretty straight forward, putting less rotation at the shock mount = less stiction.
The dropouts are adjustable by loosening the top bolt and rotating them backward. This adjusts the bottom bracket height from 13.25″ up to 13.75″ at present, but the design might change a bit. Currently it just offers two fixed positions, but product designer Keith Scott says he’s tinkering with an infinitely adjustable design that uses a bolt similar to sliding dropouts on single speed bikes to keep the position fixed. The benefit of the design is that the height adjustment doesn’t affect suspension tune or performance.
It uses a straight 1.5″ headtube and they’re talking to Cane Creek about doing it with an AngleSet. Currently, there’s no AngleSet that’ll work with the tapered forks, but (Rumor Alert!) there might be a new version of that headset coming…
The frame is warrantied for use with up to a 160mm single crown fork, which Scott says might be coming down the road.
The bike was spec’d with a new low profile, lightweight Straitline pedal with a nicely chamfered outer and leading edge.
Look for the bike early- to middle of next year.
