Keywords: 29er,700c,sram etap,superlight bike
FEATHERLIGHT U.P.P.E.R. - PART 3
Andy Kessler - 15-May-2020
In the first part of this BOTM series I explained you why we build that super light kind of gravel/road/offroad U.P.P.E.R for the
Gran Fondo Magazine. I know, it was a strange project, and I know it is also kind of strange if a gravel bike with 6.4 kilograms is lighter than all the road bikes in the test. Yes, there were some cheaper ones also but there were some with a similar price tag. What we just wanted to show actually is the versatility of the U.P.P.E.R (and U.P.). Both of them are kind of a Swiss Army Pocket knife....many many options.
When we build frames/forks they are light but we would never do a compromise for comfort and riding pleasure.
A good example for that is our U-Turn fork that we use both on the U.P.P.E.R and U.P.
The goal was not only to make one of the lightest gravel forks out there but also a fork that is compliant and has good side stiffness. Here is a pretty impressive test from gravel bike.cc on that fork.
I get often the
question if I would put a suspension fork on a gravel bike. There are good gravel suspension forks (actually MTB forks with reduced travel) out there but they are just too heavy with weights around 1.4kg. They kill the character of a gravel bike and only bring joy on very technical downhills. There are other forks out there that are better in weight but have only suspension and no dampening. If you want more suspension you can just move to a bigger tyre (you also get around 2-4cm of travel). Thats basically the same: suspension without a lot of dampening for a fraction of the weight.
I came somehow off the path, actually this last blog should be about detail specifications here they are:
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