If you’ll remember back for a second, Titus was recently closed down by their factoring company for situations not entirely unlike what just happened to Race Face. Fortunately, Planet X/OnOne bought the brand and assets from the factor and revived it with a quickness!
Then, retaining a single former Titus employee (Ben Webster), they’ve worked at lightning speed to bring several models into production. Well, near production anyway…the bikes shown here are near final prototypes and samples for testing, but Ben says they’re close. So close that he predicts the alloy version of the Racer-X 29er bike (carbon version shown above) will be out in about one month.
We’ve got pictures of that, two 29er hardtails and plenty of details after the break, starting with the story on the full carbon Racer-X shown above…
This pre-production size Medium weighed in at 25lbs 60z with Stan’s 3.30 wheels, full SRAM X0 drivetrain and brakes, a Titus carbon seatpost, WTB saddle and tires and no pedals. Claimed frame weight without shock is about 4lbs, and if that works out in final form, you could build this thing up much lighter…and in reality, that Medium is comparable in size to many brands’ Large size. On offer will be Small (17″), Medium 18.75″ and Large (21″). I usually ride a Large in most, but this one felt about right for me and I’m 6’2″. The alloy version further down will also be offered in an XS (15″) size.
The front end has a tapered headtube and the internal cable routing is “fully bladder molded.”
How did they get this bike put together so quickly? Ben said a lot of the design work on the had already been done for the Rockstar Ti/Carbon 29er bike concept. They took the Rockstar concept and tightened up the geometry to make it more of a XC racer. This one has a 70º head angle and 73º seat angle combined with a slightly higher bottom bracket. It has a 1″ shorter wheelbase than the Rockstar, and an 18″ chainstay. (Measurement is BB center to top of seat clamp)
Sealed cartridge bearings in the front rocker and main pivots with Igus bushings in the rear near the axle.
Dropouts are full carbon fiber, and the frame is a monocoque front triangle design with full carbon seatstays save for a small alloy insert at the pivot. Will be spec’d with mostly SRAM/Rockshox fork and shock, but complete build options are TBD. A frameset will be offered, too. Pricing TBD, and it should be available later this year.
They’ll also offer a model with an alloy front triangle but the same carbon rear triangle. It’ll be available next month because the rear triangle was already developed for the Rockstar. The only change is that it’ll use a full-length cable housing run to the rear derailleur. Alloy version has the same tubeset of the Rockstar, but the tweaked geometry for racy XC performance.
The Fireline is a total concept at this point because it uses the Exogrid carbon/ti downtube. They’re renegotiating with that tube manufacturer to continue to use that design, so its future is TBD. At any rate, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some form of titanium model from them soon.
This alloy hardtail 29er is internally nicknamed the Riddler, an homage to an older Titus model. Like the others, it’s in prototype stage. The seatstays will definitely thinner.
They did have some 26″ full suspension bikes that were put together by combining different frames and rear ends from before, but Ben didn’t seem to interested in pushing them just yet. We’re looking forward to see what comes from the brand and glad to see them back in the game!
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