Mystery Downhill Fork Spotted in the Devinci Pits

PB photographer Matthew Delorme photographed a yet-to-be-seen downhill fork being wired up for data acquisition at Lenzerheide in the Team AB Devinci pits. The manufacturer of the fork requested that we withhold their name, but offered up enough information to throw tech geeks a bone.

The official word is that the fork is a "three-position" design (I have no idea what that means, beyond speculating that its stroke can be adjusted to suit 26, 27.5 or 29-inch wheels). It's an air-sprung fork and the dual air valves on the spring side fork cap hint that there is a secondary bottom-out chamber inside, like the Manitou IRT and similar aftermarket retrofits for popular air-sprung forks. Its designer says that the fork can be tuned in less than five minutes to quickly adapt to changing track conditions. The damper side seems straightforward with high and low-speed dials.



They have been testing the fork at the World Cups, presumably with Devinci AB team riders, and using data acquisition to bring the fork up to speed. Look closely at the images and the CNC machining is evident in the crowns. The fork caps and damping adjustment dials, however, look finished, although sparsely styled. Officially, the lower design is not set in stone, but that may not be true, because those wrap graphics are used commercially to mask profiles and design elements from curious photographers and copycats when seen in public. An interesting clue may be the bike's shock, an EXT Arma HBC shock, made by Extreme Shox, but once again, that is hearsay. All will be revealed, it seems, at Val di Sole, where the manufacturer plans to make their big announcement.

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Reviews and Tech Forks Devinci