DIRT BOY/LIGHT-BIKES.COM: Rock Shox launches new SID!

Rock Shox launches new SID

After winning eight consecutive world championships and cranking out over half a million SID forks over its ten-year run, Rock Shox decided it was about time to put the kids to bed and wake up to a brighter morning. The new SID is (almost) here, and Rock Shox looks to have benefited from the lessons it has learned over the past few years.

Naturally, light weight was a key metric in the redesign, but engineers were not willing to sacrifice chassis rigidity goals or overall suspension performance in the process. As a result, the target 1450g weight for the production 2008 SID World Cup remains about the same as the existing model. Some may lament the lack of improvement in that area, but there certainly won't be any complaints about Rock Shox's claim that the new SID will boast overall stiffness on par with the current Reba World Cup.As we all expected, the new SID wears 32mm-diameter aluminum upper tubes matched to cast magnesium lower legs that sport Lyrik/Totem-like styling cues. In comparison to the similarly proportioned Reba, SID's stanchions are substantially shorter to minimize excess material. This allowed for correspondingly shorter damper and air spring shafts along with reduced oil volume, all of which shed grams. The shorter stanchion length also yields a hollow section at the bottom of each lower leg. This isn't all that important in and of itself, but it does allow for a more compact and rigid set of post mount disc tabs.

There is no carbon fiber steerer tube or crown, but with the newly optimized chassis, Rock Shox was apparently able to minimize the weight without resorting to more expensive (and somewhat more delicate) composite construction. Carbon fiber does make an appearance in the lower legs, however. The lower legs are wrapped in select areas to reinforce the structure, namely at the base of the arch and around the lower bushings to create a carbon fiber version of the reference Power Bulge.

SRAM will continue to use its proven spring and damper technology, but the usual plastic Motion Control spring tube is replaced with a lighter titanium version. The new compression assembly also uses a nearly identical low-speed compression circuit as on current Motion Control dampers, but now also includes a separate shimmed high-speed circuit for a more refined ride.

Both crown-mounted and remote lockout levers will be offered as with other Motion Control forks, but the new SID World Cup will exclusively offer a carbon fiber crown-mounted dial or a cleaner 'Nip/Tuck' remote cable spool design that neatly hides the end of the cable from view.Did we get to ride it? Sadly, no, but production forks will ship around February 2008.