TPE15: RST Teases inverted XC suspension fork, stealth dropper seatpost & more!

…You know, I realized Fox probably wouldn’t be the next to market with one of these, but I certainly didn’t expect THIS. I was betting on Marzocchi. Good luck, RST.

Inverted fork? 15×110 spacing? This is all SRAM’s fault!

Now they just need to put this much effort into their customer service. I also think higher end products will be a hard sale. Thr RST name just doesn’t say quality.

@cxracer- I agree that the RST name doesn’t say quality. But I think that’s for a pretty specific reason: RST’s high end is pretty low, as they don’t make any fork at the level of a SID or Boxxer. When you don’t even try in the high end of the market, people associate you with low quality. But I have to wonder if that’s justified- just because there’s no high-end forks in their line doesn’t mean that their, say $350 forks don’t work fine. Can’t say personally, though- I have never ridden them, unfortunately.

No offense but I remember them as RST = Rock Shox Taiwan!

I forgot to add my usual spiel about inverted forks. You’ll notice that almost all of them add some features not present on standard forks to up the torsional stiffness lost by removing the incredibly rigid fork brace. Maverick used double crowns, upper legs that bulged to baseball bat size, and a 24mm thru axle. Someone else (don’t remember who, it was a gold fork) used legs oval legs or that were keyed into each other to prevent twisting; someone else I don’t remember (these guys made their fork emerald green and it may be vaporware, I have not seen it on the market yet but may be wrong) turned the inner leg guards into sort-of fork braces. Rock Shox-SRAM made a (fake) 27mm axle. Manitou made an inverted fork fifteen years ago with a hex-shaped thru-axle to increase rigidity. And of course Cannondale made twisting much more difficult by integrating the axle into the fork leg and making the tubes square inside; they also used needle bearings instead of bushings, and so far have been the only inverted fork to come out ahead in terms of weight, torsional rigidity, and performance. The reason inverted fork designers add all these innovations: they need to. And almost all these innovations could be applied to a standard fork- imagine a Fox 36, rightside up, with keyed or oval legs, or maybe running on needle bearings, with a 24mm axle. It would be stiffer than an inverted fork with those same features.
And then we have this RST inverted fork, which seems to have nothing special going for it to increase rigidity- it even has the why-bother 15mm size thru axle. My guess- if it has some additional tricks up its sleeve, maybe it will end up being in the same league as a standard fork.

Hmm Im liking what I see. What an improvement on their past products. Design and weight looks nice and RST is normally not that expensive.
Could be a comeback for the RST brand.