chinamtb 09

Posts Tagged ‘Suntour Gearbox’

Suntour 09

29th April 2008 by Andi

The extremely unhelpful boys and girls over on the SR Suntour stand had a good range of their low to mid range forks, the odd crank here and their and an air of don’t bother us. This is probably why, now looking through all the photo’s I took at the show there’s not one of an SR Suntour fork.

The only new features we spotted were the electronic lock out system (which could not be seen working) and a remote travel adjust system (which again could not be seen working as they didn’t bring the cable and lever) It seems remote travel adjust is all the rage for 09 with Suntour, RST and others all jumping on the band wagon.

You may think a visit to the Suntour stand was a bit of a waste of time, however I’m almost tempted to forgive them as they had the elusive X Off V Boxx FR9 on display.

Even better than it just being on show, it actually worked! The shift is nice and precise, although its a shame they had to use a gripshit style shifter. The unit felt solid and sturdy and well made. The only thing that caught my attention was the ‘free wheeling’ sound which sounded grindy and nasty, and possibly a little off putting.

The Suntour gearbox is not new news (we reported on it, and the chance that Orange, Da Bomb and Ghost bikes could make use of it) But with problems with sizing and production woes, news on its availability was always hearsay and some wondered whether Suntour would drop the idea in the end. After seeing a unit on display we can only hope it’s in production and will be out in the near future.

‘Why do you only hope?’ you may ask ‘Why do you not know for sure? Surely there was a group of Suntour employs stood around to answer your every question and give you details about their amazing 09 range’ well my answer would be they were stood around all right and that was about it! Luckily I managed to get hold of an 09 catalogue, which has some X Boxx tech details.