Jamis reserves the “Dragon” moniker for it’s premium steel mountain bikes, so it says something that they’ve attached it to this new model. The Dragonslayer brings modern steel tubing in contact with the latest axle, wheel and tire standards to create a bike made for equal parts fun, exploration and shredding.
On the other side of the tent were their new steel adventure road bikes, the Renegade Expat and Exploit, and a fully loaded carbon fiber Renegade Expert just to show what that bike’s capable of…
The Dragonslayer started out with the Jamis guys stuffing a 27.5 x 3.0 tire in their 29er frames. Fortunately, the finished product added a lot more room by using Boost 148 rear spacing. Up front, it’s matched with the new Fox 34 Wide forks using 15×110 hub spacing.
The crankset sits inside a standard width threaded BB shell, but the rings are offset 3mm to maintain proper chainline and the ability to run a double.
The custom chainstay yoke does away with the bridge and opens things up for 4″ of tire clearance. It also allows for the wheelbase to be adjusted…
…thanks to sliding dropouts. This also means it’ll work great as a singlespeed. Note the one-piece thru axle and disc brake mount dropout piece.
Room to spare, front and rear. Slack, trail-oriented geometry is designed around a 120mm fork.
Wanna take it exploring? Besides the frame, seatpost and handlebar bags shown here (which could be added to most any hardtail), there are mounts for rear racks, too, as well as routing for a dropper post and three water bottle cage mounts. Full length cable housing keeps things sealed and simple.
The Renegade Exploit (above) and Expat (black, below) were teased in early April with most of the basic specs listed at that time. So, we photo’d them close up to see more of the details. Both are disc brake only with all manner of rack and fender mounts and full length housing.
Both bikes use the same carbon fork as the full carbon Renegade Pro. That means a thru axle in the front, but both frames get a standard quick release in the rear.
The Exploit gets a full 105 group on its Reynolds 621 steel frame.
The Expat drops down to Reynolds 520 and gets a mix match of FSA cranks with an otherwise Shimano 10-speed group. Both bikes use Clement tires on Alex rims.
Threaded bottom brackets on both, too.
We reviewed the Renegade Expert and loved it, but we never got to ride fully loaded like this! It, too, has rack mounts for the frame and fork dropouts, even if they aren’t using them here.
