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NAHBS 2016 – Wren Sports updates upside down suspension fork, adds new stems & a Boost pump

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Wren Sports first caught our eye at the 2015 Taipei show with his ultralight metal matrix brake rotors. Since then, those rotors have passed safety testing and gone on sale, so Kevin Wren’s attention has turned to refining his other products.

The biggest is his inverted fork, which was shown on Foes Racing’s new bikes. The fork has been around for a while, and has sometimes been rebranded by others, but it gets a few performance updates and is and of itself an interesting part. The design is somewhat modular, allowing them to offer a variety of sizes, lengths and widths using a small catalog of parts. The crown is offered in four widths to handle various axle standards, the legs and internals go from 26″ up to 29er, and it’ll fit up to 5″ tires depending on the axle to crown setup chosen.

The changes come in the form of new keyed stanchions and a TwinAir system that lets you really fine tune the feel…

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While you can’t swap all of the parts yourself (the lowers are bonded into the crown), you can easily replace the sliders and internals. And servicing the fork is easy, too.

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Keyed stanchions mean the axles won’t swivel around when the wheel is out, making it much easier to get the wheel back in.

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The dual air system lets you set the positive and negative air chambers separately.

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His new STM106 alloy stems run from 40mm all the way up to 130mm and are both very light and very inexpensive:

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Another recent addition to his catalog is the Boost mini pump. No, there’s nothing to do with Boost axle spacing. The cleverness comes in that the flexible hose remains attached to the pump but extends far enough out to make it easier to pump without damaging the valve stems.

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The head has a dial that switches it from Presta to Schrader without having to flip any inserts.

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All in all they’re a clever little package that retails for just $34.99.

WrenSports.com

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Buzz Johnson
Buzz Johnson
8 years ago

What is the retail price on the fork?

Tim
Tim
8 years ago

Wonder what the weight is on the fork? I’m guessing it’s on the heavy side- inverted forks almost always are. That’s probably why the weight is not listed.
Stems and shock pumps look cool and very reasonably priced.

Nate Moore
Nate Moore
8 years ago

$1000, 5 pounds, according to their website

Ol'shel'
Ol'shel'
8 years ago

I feel like the industry is in a frenzy to create as many new configurations of bike and components as possible in an effort to drive sales before the bottom drops out of the market. We know from upside down forks of the past that they’re too flexy, compared to conventional forks. WHo would want that, unless they’re hell-bent on having something different.

Upside-down forks have some advantages in Motocross that have no relation to mountain biking. Let’s let them die so that we can afford to have $9,000 chinese carbon bikes with 6 different wheel diameters that are each less than an inch apart.

TheKaiser
8 years ago
Reply to  Ol'shel'

You are right that upside down forks usually have less torsional stiffness than right side up, however they have superior for/aft stiffness. In addition, there are ways to improve torsional stiffness, such as Manitou and RockShox using a non-round/oversize axle, or Xfusion using a keyed lower/upper interface, similar to this Wren fork. There are precious few ride reports out there, but Enduro mag had pretty good things to say about the Xfusion fork, including its torsional rigidity: http://enduro-mtb.com/en/test-report-the-classy-x-fusion-revel-hlr-in-short-test/ so the concept seems like it has merit.

Tim
Tim
8 years ago
Reply to  TheKaiser

You could easily add any of those features- big, not-round axles, keyed or oval legs, on traditional forks, too.

TheKaiser
8 years ago
Reply to  Tim

Of course you could, but there is no pressing reason to do so, because traditional forks are generally fine on torsional stiffness by virtue of the design allowing for a brace at the top of the lowers. The designs I mentioned where ways to allow upside down forks to overcome their one glaring weakness vs. traditional forks.

Where you would need to improve traditional forks to make them match upside down would be through an improvement in for/aft stiffness, and none of the axle or key way features will enhance that. You would need bigger legs and a beefier crown, which may end up weighing more than a well designed USD fork of similar stiffness.

Ol'shel'
Ol'shel'
8 years ago
Reply to  Tim

Actually, keyed axles do nothing that round, clamped axles don’t already do. if those clamped, round axles were moving, you would hear horrendous creaking. They don’t creak because they don’t move.

Mike
Mike
8 years ago

@ol’shel’. Those are some of the least knowledgable statements some one can make. Mountain biking and dirt bike riding is very similar. That’s how I hot into mountain biking, and why pretty much all pro level dirt bike riders train on mountain bikes. And inverted forks that are done well are stiffer than conventional forks, but that is not the main reason companies make inverted forks.

Tim
Tim
8 years ago
Reply to  Mike

Inverted forks on motorcycles might well be stiffer than traditional forks. But that’s not the case on mountain bikes. Why the difference? It’s because motocross bikes have weight floors; you’re not allowed to race on bikes below a certain weight. That keeps the field competitive for this who don’t have the money for the latest lightweight gear. So motocross forks, whether traditional or inverted, use a lot of heavy chromoly steel construction. Consequently, all moto forks are stiff. None of this is true on MTB’s. There is no weight floor for MTB’s or their forks. And the inverted Rock Shox RS1 is widely reported to be flexy; no one denies that it’s heavier than other forks like the traditional Reba. Pretty much every magazine review says inverted forks for MTB’s are flexier; I’ve ridden an inverted Marzocchi Shiver single crown fork and found it to be a total noodle, and heavier than non-inverted models from the same company.

Ol'shel'
Ol'shel'
8 years ago
Reply to  Mike

Mike,

Speaking of ignorance, I guess you’re ignorant of the amount of slider that would hang below the axle on an MX moto. I guess you don’t know what happened when ruts 18-24″ would develop and the negative effects of having your forks hit the ground in those ruts.

I guess you’re also ignorant of the fore/aft stiffness of modern forks with 34-36mm stanchions. And ignorant of the torsional flex inherent in upside down designs.

Reformedroadie
Reformedroadie
8 years ago

So the stem is light and inexpensive…so does that mean it’s not strong?

Flatbiller
Flatbiller
8 years ago

“…And inverted forks that are done well are stiffer than conventional forks…”

Have you ridden an RS-1? If that isn’t a “well done” fork, I don’t know what is. If their resources can’t get it right, I am not going to trust an outfit run by 3 dudes in a garage in SoCal or some other similar chop shop.

As mentioned, they’re stiff for-aft, and that’s it. And that’s fine if the intended use is proper. It’s like people who buy XC bikes then want to make it DH by putting a BoXXer on it, then go on MTB forums to complain about said bike not being to handle 10-foot drops.

FoesWren_Norway
FoesWren_Norway
8 years ago

I can say that the Wren fork is at least as rigid as the ordinary forks, and almost as rigid as a double crown, due to the oversized tubes and key/keyways and beveled dropouts. My Wren 150mm feels at least as rigid/stiff as my Pike 150mm.

Tim
Tim
8 years ago

But they could put keyways in a right side up fork and have a fork that’s even stiffer than a Wren.

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