Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Rune prototype

So finally I can show you the Rune with it all nicely painted. The paint color isn't actually a color we'll be doing but for speed we decided just to paint it white and black for the rear triangle. The team color will actually be hand polished where all the white parts are and the rear triangle will be all hand polished as well... should look really slick.
Other colors will be anodized gold, anodized black with a polished ano gold lower link, and an all white powder coated one. I think there will be something to fit everyones style.

More importantly is the techy type stuff with this bike, which we've written about in earlier posts but its ok to go over it again.
The bike will be 6" of travel, have a 1.5" headtube, custom proprietary hydroformed tubesets which are not shown on the prototype and will incorporate all the gussets right into their form, the VF4B suspension with on the fly greaseable pivots [that's of course if you bring the grease with you], and I'm too lazy to go into detail on leverage ratios, rising rates blah blah blah... click the label on the sidebar that says "Rune" grab a coffee and get ready to do a bunch of reading if you so desire.

All you're hear for is the pictures anyway :P

Oh also got the weight on this frame which is a large. Without shock we're looking at 3105 grams and that includes the seatcollar [-55g w/o seatcollar] so the conversion is 1lb=.0022... so we're looking at the large in lbs at 6.8 which is pretty awesome... I couldn't find the weight on a Nomad, if you know it can you post it up in the comments section, that would be much appreciated. Oh and it should get lighter with the new tubeset so I can imagine the large coming in at around 6.5lbs for the large.
We'll get one to Jason at Sicklines so he can verify that the weight has not been embellished and is exactly as stated. Those guy do such thorough reviews that its kinda scary to send them a bike because they will cut you down if you've messed something up, and since they take the bike completely apart theres no place to hide anything.

Pricing is going to be about 2000 Cdn/1900USD with a DHXAir. If you were to look at pricing without a shock it would be around 1600/1500. If you really want to know what the dealers would sell it for you can check out the current prices on the Pyre. The Rune should be on par with that bike as my costs are about the same to produce them.

I have to say overall I'm super pleased at how this bike turned out its got so much cool stuff packed in it I don't think there's a single feature that we've overlooked. Keith of course will be playing with the best cable routing when he gets it and I think he said he'll probably be sending it at Whistler although thats not its intended purpose, its just good if we abuse the crap out of it to make sure that its solid. We do know however that it's lighter cousin the Pyre is super strong after it under went testing at Durham Universities engineering facility, and the tubeset on this bike is fatter and heavier and the math behind it shows that it will be plenty strong.

The world can be a funny place sometimes - consider this. Our Alberta rep Scott Currie was making his rounds and went by to talk to Sid at River Valley Cycles in AB and if he doesn't find Dave with the Vegvisir inked on his calf. Scott says he just got it about 3 weeks ago and had no idea the Rune was also earmarked to get this as its icon .

Again let me know what you think, if theres any suggestions you have let me or Keith know as we can still make changes if there's something you'd like to see us do on the bike. I was thinking of a beer tap just behind the seatpost but we haven't figure out the refrigeration thing yet and I'm not crazy about warm beer - its in the works tho!!!