Product news / Gravel: With the RockShox Rudy, the Americans present their first genuine suspension fork for gravel bikes. It is part of the new "XPLR" ecosystem, which also includes groupsets, wheels and other components.
Hardly any bike has as many faces as the gravel bike. This collective term includes real racing files that bring the speed of the racing bike to the gravel road - but also fast off-road racers that bring speed into line with the off-road capability of a hardtail. Exactly for the latter, Sram, RockShox and Zipp have presented a whole range of products, all of which bear the suffix XPLR. In addition to groupsets, wheels and cockpit, this also includes a suspension fork: The new RockShox Rudy. It is likely to be the first suspension fork developed specifically for gravel bikes; although Fox has had one in the past, this was more of an XC fork with less travel. The new RockShox Rudy XPLR is completely different.
XPLR products at a glance
[blog posts_per_page=”30″ taxonomy=”post_tag” tax_term=”44627″ order=”desc” orderby=”rand”]RockShox Rudy Gravel Fork: The Facts
Suspension travel: 30 or 40 mm
Axis: 12 × 100 mm
standpipe diameter: 30 mm
tire clearance: max. 50 mm
offset: 45mm, 51mm (OEM Only)
Mute: Charger Race Day
Feather: Only Air
Price: € 869
First of all: why a suspension fork on a gravel bike? Of course, this increases the off-road capability of the bikes enormously. Anyone who occasionally rides trails under the tires with their gravel racer should be aware of this. That's fine, but you're neither really fast nor do you really enjoy it. Even if the spring deflection - as well as the additional weight - strictly speaking "swallows" performance, this deficit should be quickly equalized depending on the route profile in the terrain.
The key data of the new RockShox fork already clearly show where we are headed. With 30 or 40 mm spring travel, it offers fundamentally less spring travel than "full-grown" MTB forks. The stanchions are also significantly slimmer at 30 mm. The casting itself is made of magnesium, the shaft is made of aluminum. RockShox deliberately avoided carbon to find a balance between weight, cost and stiffness. In short: The use of carbon would have made the fork unnecessarily expensive without offering any fundamental advantages. Unfortunately, the Americans are silent about precise weight information. Since this is a completely new casting, we don't dare to make any assumptions and have to wait until we hope to have a copy in our hands soon. However, there is no question that the RockShox Rudy weighs significantly more than an ordinary rigid fork.
Only one variant to start with
Initially, the new Rudy will only be available as "Ultimate": It combines the Race Day damping known from the XC-Race forks with a newly tuned Solo Air air spring. If the fork is well received, we are sure that we will see other variants in the future, maybe also in the cheaper segment. Because with an RRP of 869 euros, the Rudy is quite expensive.
Unlike the Ultimate variants in the rest of the portfolio, RockShox relies on "set and forget" with the Rudy: There are hardly any adjustment options. Only the rebound of the fork can be adjusted in addition to the air pressure. You have to do without fine-tuning the pressure level as well as tuning by tokens. On the other hand: It remains to be seen how sensible such options would be with only 30 or 40 mm of spring travel. The fork can also be locked via a rotary knob on the fork crown, a corresponding remote for the handlebars is probably not planned at the moment.
Plenty of tire clearance and fender options
The fork is pleasingly generous in terms of tire clearance. At 50 mm, even the widest Gravel tires on the market fit through the casting - nice! Of course you have to do without classic eyelets for any cages or similar, but there are many options for mounting a mudguard. The crown comes with the well-known three mounting points for a RockShox fender - i.e. a short mudguard - to keep the coarsest dirt out of the driver's face. If you want, you can even mount full metal sheets.
Availability
A difficult issue is the currently tense delivery situation and the limited availability of many components. All the better that RockShox is quite transparent here. For the RockShox Rudy, this means that the fork will be available in the aftermarket “in limited quantities” as early as August and “general availability” is expected in September.
We have already seen the first complete bikes with the new Gravel suspension fork, including this, for example Canyon Grizl CF as a suspension variant.