Spotted: Forbidden's Downhill Bike In Action - Lenzerheide DH World Cup 2022
No direct side-on shots or details just yet.
Connor Fearon joined Forbidden Bikes this season and charged into the first three downhill World Cups aboard Forbidden’s Dreadnought enduro bike with only 154mm of rear wheel travel, but is now aboard an unreleased bike, presumably with a lot more suspension. With that said, hats off to the lad for dipping into the top 20 at the Fort William World Cup aboard his Dreadnought wielding a RockShox Boxxer up front.
The high pivot trend continues in the Forbidden tent with a "murdered out" build on the raw carbon beast, although this bike looks to use a linkage that separates the braking forces from the suspension, similarly to the Norco Range and Antidote Darkmatter. How it differs slightly from those two bikes is the rocker that drives the shock articulates on a pivot above the chainring, not around the bottom bracket.
Bolt-on dropouts hint at multi-size rear wheel options.
This frame looks like it came right out of the mold with no time to wait for bolt-on downtube protectors
The idler appears to land on the seatstay, but is slightly lower than the pivot.
A RockShox BlackBox fork has a muscular look to match the frame.
The headtube looks to use 56mm top and bottom cups to maximize the amount of reach offset headset cups bring to the table.
This layout carries a few different names, like "flipped four-bar", and "virtual high pivot", but either way, it differs from the solid rear triangle design of the Dreadnought and Druid trail bikes. Compared to the silhouettes of those bikes, almost all of the tubes look more robust for the rigours of downhill racing, especially the seat mast and shock tunnel.
Near the dropout, you can notice a chunk of aluminum that houses the rear axle. Currently, there's a 27.5" rear wheel in there, but I'd wager that it's replaceable to accept a larger one too. At the front, there's some fresh love from SRAM in the form of a larger diameter stanchion dual crown fork that has been raced by other top RockShox athletes throughout the 2022 season.
We've reached out to Forbidden Bikes for more information regarding the geometry, kinematics, and travel stats and will update this space with any news. Pinkbike member @wheelsmith suggested the DH bike should be called the "Fearnought". You know, that's not bad.
The team has been hounded by our media crew, but they've remained tight-lipped about any details so far.
...but Connor remained focused on the racing at hand and wasted no time getting up to speed on the box-fresh bike.
Will a full DH-spec allow Connor to go faster or did he inadvertently tap into secret speed aboard the Dreadnought enduro bike?
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Anyway, you might ride like a softy and find the Druid too fast.
Maybe I just have a different interpretation of the sentence that was written. Interested in what you're thinking.
A 4 bar allowos changes to the anti rise characteristics, the brake still interacts with the suspension. There's no such thing as decoupling the brake unless it's a proper floating brake with a guide arm.
Much like how all the PB journalists proclaimed 29" wheels needed larger brakes. NFI what they're talking about.
Even Banshee appears to have dropped the Darkside from the line-up... that was pretty much the flagship bike.
I can understand the shift though... long travel enduro bikes are just so much more capable than when the short wheelbase/freeride bike was in its prime. Now a 180 mm fills that market for most up until you need a race bike.
the rear axles is near, the rear axle