Here’s Nukeproof’s prototype team stunt bike, the Rook. It’s built to take a bunch of punishment and being dropped repeatedly from a great height while you get your tailwhips sorted (yeah, us too…)
Downtube is like a flattened Toblerone...
Regular 135mm rear, only with a six speed cassette
Gear fine tuners there.
TT shifter on the MASSIVE down tube
Front hose hose down the steerer tube, rear brake comes out of the gold banjo.
To keep things neat and tangle-free, there’s a down tube mounted shifter – using a SRAM time trial return-to-centre shifter. And there’s also a ‘hydraulic gyro’ which means that you can spin the bars (or the bike) endlessly without worrying about tangling or breaking hoses.
It’s a ‘proper 2013’ bike but we’re sure we’ll be seeing it in the meantime.
Now, who was it complaining that there were no low rise, wide bars that you can run on a 29er? How about these Nukeproof ones?
With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)
8 thoughts on “Sea Otter 2012: Prototype Nukeproof Rook”
I love stuff like the downtube shifter and hydraulic gyro. I don’t need it, but it’s just the kind of thing I like seeing companies doing.
mmmm, yelllow….
Have to agree Alex, of no use to me but excellent development work that I too like to see. Unlike on the move tyre inflation.
hear hear.
tech development that isnt a new standard or an overcomplication of a basic principle.
love to see tinkering like that, even if I only ride rigid SS 29ers.
Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn’t a shifter on the downtube leave ones hands an awfully long way from the bars. Gulp.
Otherwise, excellent ideas, love the gyro Idea, I’ve always hated the mess of tube up front.
I just don’t get it: Why shift there?
Please explain it someone…
robsoctane
Well, I’m no slopestyle rider :), but I assumed the following:
1) Because you don’t need it mid-run and it avoids cable tangles. The shifters are also something else to get caught on when doing a barspin (or other bar trick).
Alternatively you could use a wireless electric setup.
I love stuff like the downtube shifter and hydraulic gyro. I don’t need it, but it’s just the kind of thing I like seeing companies doing.
mmmm, yelllow….
Have to agree Alex, of no use to me but excellent development work that I too like to see. Unlike on the move tyre inflation.
hear hear.
tech development that isnt a new standard or an overcomplication of a basic principle.
love to see tinkering like that, even if I only ride rigid SS 29ers.
740 or 780 you say? No, 760 or 800 they say. http://nukeproof.com/en/handlebars/warhead-flat-bar
Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn’t a shifter on the downtube leave ones hands an awfully long way from the bars. Gulp.
Otherwise, excellent ideas, love the gyro Idea, I’ve always hated the mess of tube up front.
I just don’t get it: Why shift there?
Please explain it someone…
robsoctane
Well, I’m no slopestyle rider :), but I assumed the following:
1) Because you don’t need it mid-run and it avoids cable tangles. The shifters are also something else to get caught on when doing a barspin (or other bar trick).
Alternatively you could use a wireless electric setup.