Rocky Mountain Cuts The Slayer Loose

Released during Crankworx at Whistler, the brand new Rocky Mountain Slayer has emerged as the Canadian company’s new flagship enduro bike. The Slayer has been in the Rocky lineup for well over a decade, having been first introduced to the world back in the early noughties. For 2017 though, the Slayer gets its biggest update, with a brand new frame, a new suspension layout, and brand new technologies that make it the fastest and most capable Slayer that Rocky Mountain have ever produced.

Over the past few years, the Slayer has admittedly been showing its age, so the new version comes as a timely update for Rocky Mountain. Along with the new suspension layout, Rocky have adopted modern design features including a 1x specific design, Boost 148x12mm rear hub spacing and metric shock sizing. The Slayer frameset features big-mountain geometry, with a 64.75-degree head angle (in the slackest position), and it also features Rocky’s Ride4 system, that allows you to play around with the BB height and head angle.

“Designed to lay waste to the world’s roughest trails, the Slayer is back as an all-carbon weapon. From the most aggressive Enduro World Series tracks to bike park laps and big mountain lines, its downhill-bike capability and pedalling responsiveness are matched with an uncanny ability to find and hold speed in rugged terrain” – Rocky Mountain Bicycles

The Rocky Mountain Slayer features:

• Full Smoothwall™ carbon frame
• Ride-4™ adjustability chip for precise geometry adjustments
• 165mm rear travel
• Designed for 170mm travel fork
• Max type Enduro cartridge bearing pivots with simplified hardware, Pipelock™ rocker link pivot
• Shock-eyelet bearings for small-bump sensitivity
• Single-sided chainstay and seatstay pivots for a narrower rear
  triangle—eliminates heel rub, even with Boost spacing
• 1x specific
• Clearance for up to 27.5×2.5 “wide trail” tires, and compatible with 26+ tires (26×3.0)
• Full-length internal dropper post and lockout routing.
• Internal brake routing in the front triangle, internal tube-in-tube shift routing
• Oversized downtube ports for ease of cable routing
• New derailleur hanger design reduces hardware complexity
• Lightweight bolt-on axle saves 35 grams compared to a traditional Boost axle
• PressFit BB92 bottom bracket, ZS44 | ZS56 headset
• Post-mount 180mm rear brake
• Max chainring size is 36t
• Sizing: S/M/L/XL

Aesthetically, the new Slayer is absolutely gorgeous. And that’s been verified by every one of us at Singletrack Towers, so it’s pretty much fact really. A big contributor in the style department is the use of single-sided hardware on the Slayer’s seat stay assembly, which helps to hide the pivots for a seamless look. A sleek carbon fibre rocker linkage carries on the smooth look, but delve a little deeper, and you’ll find that it also hides sealed cartridge bearings for the shock eyelet to reduce friction throughout the travel.

Interesting to note with the new Slayer is that it’s running Enduro Max bearings throughout the rear suspension linkage. Unlike previous Rocky Mountain designs (including the current Altitude) that have run bushings, the new Slayer features more commonly used sealed cartridge bearings. Whether we’ll see Rocky phase out their bushing system through the rest of their line is yet to be seen…

One other interesting spec that Rocky Mountain have listed in their press release for the Slayer is that it can take up to a 27.5×2.5in trail tyre, or a 26 plus tyre up to 3.0in wide. We’re not sure if many people will be rushing out to buy 26plus wheelsets to sub in to their carbon fibre Slayer frameset, but there you go.

If you want to know more about the new Slayer, just head to the website with the best address in the world: bikes.com (seriously, how did Rocky get that domain??).