Interbike: Turner RFX Prototype
Slideshow:Dave Turner said the latest evolution of the Turner RFX project is still six months from seeing a showroom floor.
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Regardless of how long the project has been in the works, it’s always at least a little exciting to see a raw aluminum frame with the word “prototye” across the top tube.
Floating around at last year’s show, albeit at an earlier stage of refinement, Dave Turner said the latest evolution of the Turner RFX project is still six months from seeing a showroom floor, at best.
“We still have a few obvious issues to hash out, like front derailleur cable routing and tire clearance, but it’s coming along,” Turner said. “But what you see now is essentially what the production model will look like.”
The RFX has a rough target MSRP of $2,500 for the 6.5″-travel frame, including either a standard Fox RP23 or optional coil-over. And while Turner is stating the design details aren’t set in stone, the RFX will definitely go against the trend of tapered head tubes and feature a straight 1.5-inch frame mast. The main reason Turner doesn’t run a tapered head tube to house tapered steerers is simple: Looks, he said.
“I think they look like chopped-off soda bottles,” Turner said. “We did last year’s prototype in a taper, and it looked awful.”
The fork itself, however, can be of the tapered steerer variety, which is where the benefits of said technology manifest anyway. And as a secondary benefit of running a 1.5-inch head tube, riders can choose the newest generation of adjustable headsets, allowing for headtube angle tweaks from its standard 66-degrees.