Salsa

2013 Spearfish Frame w/ Fox CTD Shock

Since the Spearfish first made it's debut at Interbike in 2010 it has set the 29er world on fire! Winning awards from places like MTBR, 29inches and Outside Magazine the Spearfish has been a bike to beat. 

With a frame weight of around 5lbs the Spearfish''s weight is on par with a lot of the steel hardtails on the the market, but unlike the steel frames you get 80mm of rear travel which isn''t going to allow you to clear huge gaps but it is enough to take the edge off of the rock garden that seems to keep your teeth chattering miles after you''ve gone through it.

The engineers at Salsa build bikes for real world riders and realize that many of todays multi-link suspension systems require a lot of maintenance to perform as intended. The following measures have been made by Salsa to make the Spearfish perform as well on day 2,000 as it did on day one.

Pivot Minimizing Suspension An 80mm rear travel version of Salsa''s link-actuated single pivot design. The Spearfish uses a simplified one-piece rear triangle with shaped stays and a shared pivot link design that reduces pivot points and hardware. This creates a lighter and stiffer rear end with fewer wear and maintenance points. 

Shaped Seatstays Shaped Seatstays are used in favor of a rear pivot on the 1-piece rear triangle. A rear dropout pivot (if present) would only rotate 1-degree during full suspension compression. Salsa choose eliminate this pivot point and instead transform the 1-degree of rotation into a slight 5.2mm deflection of the seat stays tubes. The seatstays are shaped and sized appropriately to handle this small amount of deflection and has a fatigue life far beyond the lifespan of the frame. The result is a lightweight, one-piece rear triangle with a single pair of bearings at the main pivot. 

Extruded, CNC''d Shared-Pivot Link Short and compact, the dog-bone shaped link features a shared pivot where the shock and seatstays meet the link. This removes a shock pin from the system and keeps the link small and light.

New to the Salsa Spearfish 1 last year was the Maxle 142x12mm rear dropouts to increase rear end stiffness without adding a ton of weight. This upgrade was so well received that all versions of the Spearfish will receive the upgrade for 2013.

The Fox Float CTD Boost Valve Rear Shock has been custom tuned to match the suspension load rate of the Spearfish. This shock uses some of the latest technology Fox offers such as 

• Boost Valve; which is a position sensitive valving which allows for better dampening through out the entire stroke of the shock.
• CTD; short for climb, trail, descend is a 3 position lever to quickly adjust how the bike reacts to bumps and rider input.
• External Rebound Control; Next to setting up proper sag rebound is one of the most important adjustments you need to make to your suspension. If it''s set up too low the bike will handle like a ''76 Cadillac, if it''s too high the bike will be too bouncy.