Spotted on the Santa Cruz Nomad CC show bike in the Hope booth at this year’s Eurobike show were two tasty little surprises from Swedish suspension legend Öhlins: a damper upgrade for the venerable RockShox Pike and a new coil-sprung piggyback rear shock. The company has not formally announced either but performance-minded enduro riders might want to start saving their pennies.
Öhlins’ existing STX22 cartridge upgrade for the Fox 40 downhill fork doesn’t try to wow you with a dizzying array of knobs and dials. External adjustments are intentionally limited, and all of the critical settings require tearing things apart inside. This is Öhlins’ standard mode of operations, though, to supply its customers with what it feels is the best overall stock tune, and limit the ways in which people can screw that up.
It looks like Öhlins has a new damper cartridge coming for the popular RockShox Pike
Likewise, the upcoming Pike cartridge upgrade is almost disappointingly devoid of external doodads. There are just adjustment knobs – one for low-speed rebound damping and another for low-speed compression damping – and they’re both tooled, meaning you won’t be tempted to just mindlessly fiddle away at the top of every run. Any high-speed damper adjustments will require swapping out shims in the piston heads.
Based on what we now about the STX22, this Pike-specific version will be a fully sealed, drop-in system with a coil spring-backed internal floating piston up top to prevent oil cavitation, and to allow fluid expansion as the system heats up. Nestled into the compact gold-anodized top cap next to the compression adjuster is what we believe to be a bleed port to evacuate any air pressure that might accumulate over time in the IFP chamber.
External adjustments are intentionally limited
That coil spring – not to mention what we anticipate to be beefy all-metal construction given how the STX22 is built – may very well add a few grams to the Pike’s total weight as compared to the stock Charger damper. That said, any rider interested in such an upgrade is likely more concerned with overall performance and durability.
Out back, Hope’s Nomad CC showpiece also wore a previously unseen Öhlins coil sprung rear shock. Unlike the current TTX rear shock, this latest model uses a more conventional piggyback reservoir (but likely still uses the company’s trademark twin-tube internal architecture).
Got a Santa Cruz Nomad, or any other frame with the same shock size? It seems you'll soon have the option of switching to an Öhlins rear shock
Perhaps more exciting, however, is just the fact that Öhlins is apparently expanding its range of rear shock options to fit more bikes.
While we have no official details regarding pricing or availability for either the new damper cartridge or rear shock, it’s a safe bet that both will be mighty expensive.
For more information, visit http://www.ohlins.com.