Sea Otter 2017: Brew Nitro Shox – Nearing Production

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We brought you news of UK company Nitro Shox back in 2015 and the small company has been busy in the meantime. Using something called oleo strut technology, it skips the mountain bike world’s basis on motorbike suspension and looks instead to military – tank and landing gear – suspension. Where shocks need to be absorbed reliably over and over.

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A current prototype of the more complex rear shock

Instead of the distinctively home made looking shock we first saw, there’s a far more professional looking, and expanded unit.

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Dial for platform…

The shock is completely different in design and construction to other shocks on the market. Rather than having an air spring and oil damping, the shock is air filled, but then charged with a specific pressure of nitrogen according to the rider’s weight.

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A Bronson in the middle of being raced at the Otter’s enduro event

The designers of the Nitro Shox come from military work, where they’ve consulted on things like airplane landing gear suspension and, interestingly, tank suspension – where you need the wheel suspension to be pretty good so you can still fire a shell while charging over rough ground…

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The new piggyback knob is to adjust the initial shock preload. After that, there’s not much to adjust.

As the shock works differently to other units, there are fewer adjustments available (though there are four different shocks planned – with more and more levels of adjustment (whether you need them or not…)

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If you see our previous story, this is SO much more pro looking than the first protos…

What’s next for Nitro Shox? A bit more testing and then getting sample shocks to test riders and magazine folks and then full production by next year – even a downhill specific shock. Stay tuned…

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Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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