The New Ripmo

If you won­dered when the car­bon Rip­mo would get AF’d, well, you can stop won­der­ing. Today, we’re releas­ing the Rip­mo V2. We’ve made it a full degree slack­er, a lit­tle bit longer, stiffer, and added pro­gres­siv­i­ty for coil compatibility.

Just like the orig­i­nal, our newest Rip­mo was devel­oped under the demands of com­pe­ti­tion. Robin Wall­ner rode a dis­guised Rip­mo V2 to four top-ten fin­ish­es dur­ing the 2019 EWS season.

To start, we gave the V2 a more pro­gres­sive end rate with more ramp up, which elim­i­nates bot­tom-out wor­ries for hard-charg­ers. And that opens the door for a coil shock. And the ini­tial lever­age ratio is now a lit­tle high­er for improved small bump per­for­mance, elim­i­nat­ing trail chatter.

But life isn’t just a mag­ic car­pet ride of epic descents. To go down, you have to go up. The orig­i­nal Rip­mo was just as laud­ed for climb­ing as it was for float­ing above tech. The V2 main­tains the Ripmo’s rep­u­ta­tion for uncan­ny climb­ing capa­bil­i­ties. Climb a Rip­mo V2 and a Rip­mo back to back and you won’t notice a difference.

Down­hill is anoth­er mat­ter. We went one-degree slack­er for the head angle, kept the stack height the same, and added just a few mil­lime­ters of reach to round things off (471 to 475mm on a size L). We test­ed this geom­e­try with the Rip­mo AF and it’s been uni­ver­sal­ly laud­ed — noth­ing holds you back descend­ing (rock rolls, drops, root gnarls) but you’re not pilot­ing a dump truck climb­ing sin­gle­track switch­backs. It shreds and climbs.

Since we increased the Rip­mo V2’s capa­bil­i­ty, we thought it only wise to beef up its pro­tec­tion. It’s a beau­ti­ful car­bon frame, might as well keep it that way. We’ve added link­age guards that pro­tect the upper and low­er link­ages from con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, while covert­ly hid­ing between the front and rear triangles.

And despite all the AF updates to the Rip­mo V2, we kept its weight to a svelte 6.25 lbs. for a size medi­um with Fox DPX2. With com­pletes start­ing at 28 lbs, the Rip­mo is just as much the all-day climber it’s been, just with more snarl and men­ace on the descent.

With the Rip­mo V2, you have the very best Rip­mo we can make. It incor­po­rates the geom­e­try we per­fect­ed on the Rip­mo AF. It fits 29 x 2.6” tires, a full-size water bot­tle, cloud­like climba­bil­i­ty, and it has a pro­gres­sive end stroke for coil-shock com­pat­i­bil­i­ty. It touts our 7‑year frame war­ran­ty and life­time war­ran­ty on IGUS bush­ings. And most impor­tant­ly, it won’t hold you back. On any­thing. And yep, it’s avail­able now.