SRAM releases loads of new products for the new open standard, Boost

SRAM is getting fully behind Boost, a new open standard aimed at 29ers that is starting to gather pace in the mountain bike industry, first seen on Trek’s latest Remedy this year, and supported by SRAM and RockShox with a raft of new products, including Pike forks and Roam wheels. Boost 148 and Boost 110 might very soon become common names on mountain bikes in the next few years.

The idea behind the new Boost standard is wider hub spacing. At the front, 100mm hubs have increased to 110mm hubs, while at the rear the hub spacing is up from 142mm to 148mm.

The advantage of the increased spacing of the wider hubs,  with the hub flanges pushed further outboard, is a stronger and stiffer wheel. SRAM claims Boost provides a 29in rear wheel that is as stiff as a non-Boost 27.5in rear wheel, using the same rim and spokes.

To accommodate this new standard, this week SRAM has issued a raft of new products utilising Boost. The wider hubs need wider forks, so there are new SID, Reba and Pike suspension forks.

The wider hub spacing, and the stiffer wheels this will produce, has obvious benefits for 29ers, where wheel stiffness has sometimes been less than desirable. The Boost standard is aimed primarily at 29ers. The new SID and Reba are both available in 29in Boost. However, the new Pike is available in both 29in Boost and 27.5in Boost.

All three new forks can be used with the other new standard in mountain biking, 27.5+, which uses a wider 3in tyre.

Additionally, the new forks feature a new Torque Cap, which increases the interface size between the fork dropout and hub end cap, to produce a stiffer setup. The new Boost and Torque Cap standards are still based around a 15mm bolt-thru front axle.

There are also new Boost X0 hubs and Roam 40 wheels, and updated XX1 and X1 chainsets with 3mm offset rings to maintain the ideal chain line. We expect to see bikes coming out later this year built around the new Boost standard, but it does remain to be seen if the Boost standard will be commonly accepted across the industry, and critically, with the riders buying bikes.

In other news, RockShox has also released the new XC 30, a cheaper 27.5in fork option for the growing number of 27.5in mountain bikes now available.

The XC 30 uses much of the proven RockShox technology, including 30mm chrome-plated steel upper tubes, a TurnKey lockout and coil springs with external preload. Travel is 120mm, but can be modified internally to 100 and 80mm.

There’s a tapered aluminium steerer tube option along with the standard non-tapered steerer tube model. The new XC 30 weighs a claimed 2,468g.

More info at www.sram.com