Felt almost snuck this one by, right under our noses. What looks to be a next generation of the Felt Racing Development (FRD) full-suspension Edict cross-country bike was spotted racing at the World Cup last weekend, hidden in plain sight under a striking snakeskin vinyl wrap job. To be fair it wasn’t that we almost overlooked the bike (we were drawn straight in by that snakeskin), but sporting what look like some new-to-us, race-ready tires from Chinese tire maker Chaoyang, we almost discounted the decal job as a ploy to attract attention to the Zippering tires. But that wasn’t the case, hidden under that snakeskin is a new short travel carbon XC race bike that takes the Edict to the next level with new tech proven on last year’s 140mm Decree trail bike. It’s been almost three years since the Edict got a weight trimming layup update, but now it looks poised to get a major design overhaul….
Setting aside the snakeskin, tubing profiles looks very similar to the new longer travel carbon trail Decree, albeit a bit thinner overall. The Edict prototype shares the boxy toptube shape, more rounded downtube, and  angular cut-in window in the seat cluster. It also gets a similar-looking rocker linkage driving the shock and an added-on shock mount bridging between the seat and down tubes, just above the bottom bracket.
The new design uses a more direct, midway bent seattube vs. the current Edict’s wavy seattube, cut in around the main pivot on the driveside to fit a conventional front derailleur. This bike has gone for a 1x SRAM Eagle setup (as we’ve seen from many XC race bikes) but felt isn’t ruling out a 2x drivetrain. We do see a low E2-type direct mount attachment point for a front derailleur or chain guide hiding behind the chainring, just in front of the swingarm’s main pivot.
Suspension design wise, it sticks with the same high single-pivot layout of the current 100mm Edict with a one-piece rear end driving a vertically mounted shock by way of a seattube-mounted rocker arm. One big update as well is the use of completely internal cable routing, vs. the current bolt-on external setup.
Taking another design cue from the Decree, this prototype Edict uses the same modular cable routing ports placed directly on the front of the tapered headtube. It gets internal routing for the shock lockout, and while we don’t see the front derailleur cable port itself, the new bike likely gets SideSwing compatible routing hidden under the snakeskin.
This is the tire that piqued our interest. Not so different than some of the other fast rolling treads we see racing the World Cup, the Zippering gets a tubeless ready 120tpi casing, and from marks we’ve seen on the team bikes has tire weights for the 29 x 2.2″ tire of about 651g.
That’s pretty much the extent of the details we know on the this prototype of the forthcoming Edict update. The bike was built up with a DT Swiss OPM fork and R414 rear shock, which racer Nicola Rohrbach bottoms out here so we get to see the bike’s full travel.
We’ll keep our ears open, but expect we’ll learn more about the new bike over the summer sometime.
