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All-New Niner RIP9 Alloy Mountain Bike Unveiled – Lighter, Longer Travel & Stronger!

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New 2013 Niner RIP9 alloy 29er enduro mountain bike

Hot on the heels of the carbon RIP9 RDO, Niner has introduced a completely revised alloy RIP9. While they’re still calling it a trail bike, it looks like it’ll fall nicely into the burgeoning Enduro category.

The frame has been reworked from head to toe, with more sculpted hydroforming airforming to increase stiffness, more shapely (and lighter) linkages, a 10mm bump in travel to 125mm in the rear, and an upgrade to 12×142 Maxle thru-axle as standard equipment. The entire package not only looks better, it comes in a full half-pound lighter than before!

Roll past the break for complete tech specs, geo charts and more details…

New 2013 Niner RIP9 alloy 29er enduro mountain bike

The frame comes in at 7lbs for a medium with seat collar, rear Maxle, derailleur hanger and custom tuned Rockshox Monarch RT3 HV shock. That’s a full half-pound lighter than before, and only about .65 pounds heavier than the carbon RDO model.

New 2013 Niner RIP9 alloy 29er enduro mountain bike

Framesets will run $1,849, same as before, and come in Niner Green and Licorice Black.

New 2013 Niner RIP9 alloy 29er enduro mountain bike

Geometry stays the same, now matching the RDO. That’s thankfully more slack and dialed than the early generation RIP9 bikes, which were a bit steep for the amount of travel.

New 2013 Niner RIP9 alloy 29er enduro mountain bike

The linkages have been reworked and are now asymmetric to provide better chainguide clearance and allow room for ISCG 05 tabs directly on the frame. They’re also lighter and stiffer. Everything pivots around Enduro Max sealed cartridge bearings.

New 2013 Niner RIP9 alloy 29er enduro mountain bike

All of the forged yokes and attachments were reworked to save weight and increase stiffness, too. The top and downtubes were curved and shaped before, now just more so.

New 2013 Niner RIP9 alloy 29er enduro mountain bike

The prior version came stock with replaceable 135mm QR hangers and 142×12 parts options. Now it’s a dedicated thru-axle design, which means even more stiffness and a simpler, cleaner appearance. Frames ship with the Rockshox Maxle axle.

Carla Hukee, Niner’s PR manager, explained airforming versus hydroforming as such: “This process is similar to hydroforming, but uses super-heated air pushed into the tubes at high pressure while inside a mold. The forming can take 3-5 minutes per tube (hydroforming is instant) and allows the wall thickness and butting to maintain a very high tolerance (10ths of a millimeter), producing a tube shape to extreme precision. Our primary goal with the (new) RIP 9 was weight reduction and the new Airforming process is a big part of why we were able to take a half a pound out of it.”

Framesets and complete bikes ship in May. Two builds are offered, Shimano XT ($4,199) and SRAM X7 ($2,999).

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bc
bc
10 years ago
Samuel J. Greear
10 years ago

Part count of the frame has dropped by 4? pieces it looks like, which also means a pretty significant reduction in weld area. I would guess this frame costs less to produce than the old version, and the Rock Shox rear shock probably saves Niner a few bucks too. Hard to tell for sure but it looks like they went full housing for the cables as well, props for that. Looks like a pretty good piece of engineering to me, but even with the rear axle included I would like it better at $1750 than $1850, looks to me like they have probably done a good job increasing their margin at $1850.

Alex
Alex
10 years ago

Where do they expect mere mortals to ride that thing with those gear combos?? 36/22 pls.

JMH
JMH
10 years ago

A 36/22T is easily accomplished using a triple with no outer ring. So there you go, mere mortal! =)

Alex
Alex
10 years ago

But why would they recommend / build around monster gear combos??

JMH
JMH
10 years ago

Those are recommended maximum sizes, it says 26/39T or lower.

X
X
10 years ago

meh. still a niner so it’ll probably break.

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