Sea Otter 2012: SRAM, Rockshox, Avid 2013

The SRAM presentation always has a few juicy things to get the average mountain biker excited, though this year’s presentation was slightly tempered by the fact that we’ve seen a lot of it’s new goodies already. See here for some and here for more and more here.

However, SRAM did dig some more 2013 goodies out of the secret cupboard.

SRAM’s Rize wheels were introduced in October 2011 in both 26in and 29in but have now been joined by ‘the medium size’ wheels.There’ll be a Rize 40 level 650B wheel which SRAM reckons will see service on 130mm-150mm bikes. Greg Herbold reckoned that the 27.5 size ‘Has the roll-ability of 29in and the snapnicity of 26in’.  There’ll also be tubeless kits arriving for all of the Rize series.

There’s been a change to RockShox’ air forks too. The Revelation, Reba and SID will all have a new simplified air spring. One valve fills both the positive and negative air springs and automatically balances them. This will replace the Solo Air and the Dual Air cartridges in future.

There’s also been a change to the mechanical PushLoc lever. Rockshox has changed it based on its XX lever so that now it’s going to be a push-push knob for locking and unlocking.

Next up on the RockShox agenda was the Monarch RT3. Rather than having a lock or not lever, there’s now a three way lever that offers open, pedal platform and lockout. The rear shock knob rotates a third for ever position, so it’s easy to feel which mode the shock is in.

We’ve covered the XO trail brake in a previous story, so there’s not need to go over that again, save to mention that Avid has made a 170mm rotor size. It’s for those in-between jobs like XC rotors for 29er bikes and anything else where you need ten more than a 160…