BOTM: Shocking WIDE
A birthday gift from SRAM
The Fork
Anyway, SRAM built up a bike for me, so I sent an OPEN WI.DE. frame in advance and the rest was SRAM putting on the goodies they like. Most prominent is of course the Rockshox fork. We have customers who ride with this fork. Some love it, others a bit disappointed, I think the only way to really tell is to try. My own take on suspension forks for gravel is that this is a really difficult nut to crack.
A gravel fork is a lot more difficult to design than a mountain bike fork. On gravel, you often encounter washboard surfaces, and any fork will have trouble with the high frequency of that terrain. So for the small bumps, it's a challenge.
Then for the big bumps, there isn't a lot of travel on the fork, so again a challenge. That's why the recommended sag on the Rudy is so small. It's not necessarily that that's the ideal, it's just that there is already so little travel,
so if you then give a substantial chunk of it away to your sag, there's almost nothing left.
And the final kicker, gravel riders are more focused on weight, so adding a kilogram of extra weight to the bike for a suspension fork is a tough case to make. Overall, I enjoyed the fork on some parts of the course, didn't feel it did much on others, and so in my situation, I wouldn't put it on my everyday bike.
But of course where you live and ride, the situation may be different. What I will say is that the handing of the bike was still fine, it's different than with the standard fork and loses some agility, but in combination with the suspension that's not a bad thing.
The Post
Specifications
| frame | OPEN WI.DE. size XL |
| headset | Cane Creek standard OPEN |
| fork | OPEN U-Turn |
| stem | Zipp Service Course 110mm |
| handlebar | Zipp Service Course 440mm |
| seatpost | Rockshox Reverb XPLR |
| saddle | Specialized Romin (that was OK, they make good saddles :-) |
| brakes | SRAM Rival AXS, Rotor 160 f&r |
| shifters | SRAM Rival AXS |
| crank | SRAM Rival 172.5 |
| BB | SRAM DUB BB386 |
| chainrings | SRAM 40T |
| rear derailleur | SRAM Eagle GX |
| cassette | SRAM Eagle 11-50 |
| chain | SRAM Eagle 12-sp |
| wheel | Zipp 303 Firecrest |
| tire | Zipp G40 - 700x40c |
I have had my Open WIDE with Rock Shox for over two years. My husband and I were riding the Arizona Trail yesterday: steep, rugged, unpolished, loose-rock terrain. As I stopped to admire the reflecting sunset off the Vermillion Cliffs, I said, “I have not had a traumatic accident; since we got our Rock Shox!” I also love handling the trail like a queen. I’ll admit, we use our WIDEs for trail and adventure cycling, perfectly paired with dropper posts. We use our Open UP bikes with rigid forks, for road/gravel mix. Still, this technology has been a game changer! (White bar tape, bold choice!) Love our Opens (Always dusty) With gratitude, Amy
Hi Amy, thanks for the feedback, glad it works well for you. Sounds like some awesome riding. Keep the wheels turning
Looks great - I have the same WI.DE in Medium with the new Cane Creek 'Inverted' shocks and the AXS dropper post which I really love - I have this setup for more technical gravel rides and use 650b wheels most of the time - I also intend to do a long bike-packing ride from the top of New Zealan's South Island to the bottom - Sounds2Sounds - Yep, it weighs a bit more but handling is fine - I just had to tweak the seat position and move the stem as low as it could go to ensure I have a good riding position - Really amazing ride on rough gravel roads and so much faster down bumpy trails and roads - Feels so stable at speed downhill! I don't use it for flat easy gravel races - I have my UP for that!