The latest From Cannondale, Rocky & Manitou

So, here’s the second installment of news from Interbike—the bike industry’s big tradeshow in Las Vegas. What? Didn’t catch the first installment? Check it out here by clicking 2005 Interbike Report-Part One

Cannondale is aiming its new Rush bike at 24 hour racers.

CANNONDALE INTRODUCES TWO NEW DUALIES
Cannondale.is adding two new full-suspension models to their line in 2006. The first bike, the Rush is aimed at the 24 Hour racing set. The Rush is basically the love child of a Scalpel and a Prophet. It’s almost as if Cannondale took the front end of a Scalpel and mated it to a Prophet rear end. Geometry is somewhere in between the two bikes (a one degree more relaxed head tube than the racing Scalpel and a lower bottom bracket than the All Mountian Prophet). The Rush bangs out a hair over four inches of rear travel (110 millimeters) and is basically meant to cover ground quickly, but with a bit more forgiving handling traits than the pure racing Scalpel. There will be seven Rush models ranging in price from a very affordable $1,300 to a Holy-Crap-That’s-Expensive $5,500 Team Replica edition.

The Gracia is Cannondale's pure downhill machine.

Cannondale is also introducing three new Cedric Gracia big hit-style models. All three models sport 220 millimeters of coil-sprung rear travel, thru axle front and rear ends and downhill-ready parts. Price is yet to be determined.

When it comes to front suspension, Cannondale is still relying heavily—almost exclusively, really—on their Lefty forks. While the Lefty was always burly as hell (I know, you wouldn’t think a one-legged fork could be, but rest assured, the Lefty is much less prone to flex than most long-travel forks), but the compression quality wasn’t always on a par with the competition.

This Lefty features Fox Inertia Valve damping. Some longer travel Lefty Max forks feature Manitou SPV damping.

Cannondale has revamped their Lefty internals, however. The Lefty Speed Carbon Fox Terralogic TT (Cannondale’s 110-millimeter travel XC race fork) possesses Fox Inertia Valve technology. Likewise, Cannondale has equipped their 140-millimeter Lefty Max Carbon SPV Evolve fork with Manitou SPV technology.

MANITOU
Speaking of Manitou….Manitou showed up at the trade show with a variety of new forks. Travis tops the list—we’ve covered these forks already on this site, but here’s the short version. Travis is a new single and double-crown line of freeride-downhill forks. What about Dorado? Travis kicks Dorado to the curb. Key features include 34-millimeter stanchions, coil springs, through-axles, and up to 203-millimeters of travel. The two dual crown Travis models feature 1.125-inch steerers and the two single crown models sport 1.5-inch steerers.

Four new Travis models replace the Manitou Dorado.

Three of the Travis forks are equipped with “Intrinsic”—a new damping technology which Manitou claims gives a plusher initial compression stroke for ultimate small-bump sensitivity (they did this by moving the SPV valve from the shaft up to the top of the fork leg. With the valve now working off of fluid displacement instead of shaft travel, the platform damping doesn’t kick in right off the bat and the fork feels plusher during the first stages of travel. As the fork progresses through its travel, the fluid movement inside the fork causes the pressure to build up and close the valve so that the fork doesn’t just blow through its travel. The single-crown, Travis Single Intrinsic weighs 6.5 pounds and features 180 or 203 millimeters of travel. The dual crown Travis Triple Ti Intrinsic weighs 7 pounds and also has 180 or 203 millimeters of travel—both of these high end Travis models also feature Manitou’s new tool-free Hex Lock Thru Axle (which, kinda-sorta reminds me of RockShox’s Tullio system of yore…I’m sure it’s different in several hard-to-see ways, I’m just mentioning the obvious aesthetic similarity). The XC racer types out there might be wondering when somebody is going to start throwing the fancy paint jobs and gadgets their way again. Well, Manitou’s Seven forks are aimed at that crew. Four Seven models will replace the far-too-flexy Scareb line. Seven features stouter lowers, 30-millimeter stanchions, and varying levels of compression and rebound damping (depending on how much you want to pay). The top of the line R7 Platinum is also equipped with a new, racing-firm version of SPV called Snap Valve SPV.

The stiff and light Seven takes the place of the Manitou Scareb.

Seven and Travis are just the top of the Manitou mountain, so to speak. The company is also producing 145 millimeter travel Nixon forks; 100-130 millimeter travel Minute forks (now with 32-millimeter stanchions, new one-piece mag lowers and a No Tools volume adjustment feature); Gold Label Jump Series forks; Stance forks, Black, Splice and Axel forks. All in all, we’re talking about 30 separate fork models over 10 different fork lines. That’s a lot of forks and a real indicator of just how segmented mountain biking has become.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN PIMPS THE SLAYER
The good Canadians at Rocky Mountain did more than fiddle around the edges when they decided to revamp their Slayer line for 2006. In a way, Slayer was a precursor to this whole All Mountain thing, but (and I’m just pontificating as an outsider here) the Slayer hasn’t been getting the same level of attention as some of its younger cousin-in-arms (such as the Giant Reign, Santa Cruz Nomad, Intense 5. 5, etc.). That should change next year—the radically re-designed Slayer now boasts a beefy, six-inch travel, single-pivot design that owes a lot to Rocky’s long-established freeride models such as the RMX and Switch. Other features include a carefully shaved down frame and a lower bottom bracket (than previous Slayers) for greater stability.

Rocky Mountain's Slayer received a major overhaul for 2006.