![]() With the frame overall, there was a fresh look at how the carbon was laid up and the bike was optimized to save weight in any way possible while still meeting the strength, stiffness, and compliance goals of the team. This allows for more tire clearance and allowed the design team to remove some carbon in areas it wasn't needed on the frame, further lightening things. Additionally, it allows much more compatibility with a wide range of dropper seatposts. While this goes a bit against conventional thinking, Specialized's team claims that it's more compliant than the 27.2 version thanks to the new shape of the tube and the smaller seat stays. The seat tube sizes up from 27.2mm to 30.9mm. It now comes with a 42mm offset fork, compared to the 51mm offset that was spec'd before. There's an increased amount of tire clearance, and the frame itself has a few more curves in it in order to save weight and meet Specialized's performance goals. The dropouts are smaller and the seat stays are more narrow than the previous version. ![]() The obvious drawback being that the 32mm Reba chassis isn’t very stiff, but this is offset somewhat by using oversized 28mm Torque Caps at the hub to reduce flex.There are a number of updates to the frame for the new Epic HT. The 120mm RockShox Reba RL fork doesn’t have a Brain but it gets a really progressive compression tune and it certainly feels less supple and more efficient than the Fox fork on the Scott. We say almost, because it still retains the slightly disconcerting knock when it opens up on single hits. The threshold can be adjusted to five levels of Brain function, from efficiently firm to almost switched off and fully active. ![]() Hit a bump on the trail and the shock opens up and remains open for as long as the impacts keep coming. As such, sprinting out of the saddle and climbing on smooth terrain keeps the shock locked. It’s what determines just how the shock reacts to rider inputs and the terrain. The smart part of the shock is the inertia valve mounted at the rear axle. Specialized has also added a larger volume rear tyre, which means the BB height on the Evo also creeps up, but more importantly the bike retains a lot of the Epic’s race bred personality, so riders coming from a pure XC background shouldn’t feel too far from Kansas.īrain shock is designed to let you forget about suspension and focus on riding Suspensionĭuring the last round of revisions, Specialized switched the Epic to a flex stay suspension set-up, while retaining the distinctive Brain shock. So it’s only by fitting a longer-travel fork that the Evo gets slacker and more trail-oriented geometry. And if the M5 aluminium alloy frame on the Comp Evo looks like the standard alloy Epic, that’s because both models use the exact same frame. The Epic Comp Evo at £2,900 and Epic Expert Evo at £5,150. The design team was so impressed that the Epic Evo was born and is now available in two complete builds. What they realised was, that despite the lack of travel, pumping up the Epic transformed it into a pretty capable trail bike. The best XC race bikes: Hardtail and full-suspensionĪt the launch of Specialized’s Epic XC race bike in 2017, the designers had already been playing with a few different models, incorporating dropper posts and longer-travel forks.
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