SRAM and Rock Shox 2012 at Pass’portes Du Soleil

Along with the plentiful meat, cheese and drink on offer to entrants there are massive trade stands from the likes of Lapierre, Scott, SRAM and many more, so there’s always plenty to see off the bike.

So, as Matt and Jon were in Les Gets to attend the 2012 Lapierre launch and to shoot a feature on the Pass’portes du Soleil for Issue 68 (subscribe now!), they strolled about Les Gets with a beautiful combination of cheese overdose, arm pump and mild sunstroke and were ushered into the welcome shade of the SRAM stand.

There they were fed small and tasty cups of coffee and shown lots of shiny new things that’ll be available from the SRAM mega-corp for 2012 as well as being given the “Rock Shox Book of Expertise”, which made them feel rather special.
Internally routed Reverb Stealth launched for OEM customers


The thing that got us the most excited was the new Rock Shox Reverb Stealth post. The only thing that’s annoying about the Reverb (and all of the other uppy downy posts out there) is the fact there’s a cable flopping about on the outside, catching on the tyre when the post is dropped, rubbing on the frame and just waiting for some accident to rip it out – although hasn’t happened to any of the Reverbs being ridden in the office yet.


The Reverb Stealth gets round those pitfalls by taking the hose for the hydraulic remote out the bottom of the post and inside the frame, keeping everything looking neat and out of the way. Obviously you need a frame specifically designed for this so the Reverb Stealth is only going to be available on new bikes from Trek and Scott for 2012.

The guts are positioned upside down but you’ll still be able to bleed it from the top, which should make installation slightly less of a faff. Hopefully this will become a more common fitment, although it might make mechanics that struggled with internal gear cable routing even more miserable.
Standard Reverb gets new hose fittings and travel options

The normal Reverb has had a bit of a tweak too, with new threaded barb hose fittings at either end and there’s now a 100mm travel option as well as the 125mm if you don’t need that much travel to fit your frame. Going the other way, an ‘Enduro collar’ will also be available which clamps onto the upper to limit the travel if you don’t want the post going all the way down.