Ibis Cycles today announced the sequel to its very popular 29er full suspension bike, the Ripley.
Fun Singletrack Fact: The Ripley is named after Robert Ripley (and his ‘Believe it or not!’ show) who is buried in Scot Nicol’s home town of Santa Rosa, California.
The new Ripley has been in development since, well since the old Ripley came out two years ago and it reflects several changes/evolutions that have happened to bikes since 2015.
For a start, there are going to be not one, but two Ripleys. The Ripley and the Ripley LS (which stands for Long and Slack) which Ibis claims “is for all the N-1 headtube angle folk out there” – this adds 0.5in to the top tube length and slackens the head angle by 1.7° while steepening the seat tube a little (geometry chart at the bottom of the page).
Changes that apply to both models include:
Internal cable routing using Ibis’ port system, found on the HD3
Increased tyre clearance
Threaded bottom bracket, rather than the press-fit of the original models
Seat mast lowered by 1/2in to accommodate today’s longer droppers
Choice of Boost 148 (starting in November ’15) or 142mm x 12mm Shimano through axle (now)
Stiffer eccentric cores
A move from the current Cane Creek shock to a Fox Float DPS EVOL rear shock
New rubber molded chainstay and seatstay protection (this retrofits to the original Ripley too)
New colours (that Ibis is calling them “Tang” and “Black”)
The first of the new Ripleys will arrive at Ibis in early July and at importers 2Pure hopefully not long after that. The new Ripley comes in medium and large.
The Ripley LS, that we imagine will be the hot tomato in the range will ship in size XL first and then in Medium and Large around early September in the UK. These will all be 142 rear end models. The Boost 148 won’t appear until much later in the autumn.
Retail price will the same as the current Ripley at £2649 and available through 2Pure dealers. Full bikes will come in Special Blend, XT 1x and XT 1x Werx builds. Pricing of those isn’t set yet.
For more info, have a look at the Ibis page: www.ibiscycles.com/bikes/ripley_29/
Here’s a gallery of close-ups from Matt ‘Instagram filter all the time’ Wragg
