Infrequently seen Chinese brand EXS, in the UK at least, had a stand at Rouleur live staffed by an incredibly effusive member of the team. In between waxing lyrical about the brand’s titanium axles for the Specialized Tarmac, its superlight stems, and its new integrated bar-stem combo, I was shown a fork that has the potential to allow a Specialized Aethos, or any round-tubed bike it was claimed, to run the hoses and cables inside the frame entirely.
The fork is primarily aimed at those bikes that already feature some degree of internal cable routing. The Aethos in this hypothetical example is routed internally from the head tube, but externally from there to the bars. If you wished to make a bike that was fully external you would have to get a little handy with a power drill and very much void your warranty.
I didn’t get many shots, such was my whirlwind visit along with a slight language barrier, but from what I gathered the fork, in combination with a corresponding stem features a large channel down the front through which a front hydraulic brake hose can be fed.
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With this EXS fork you can, it seems, make any partially internally routed bike into a fully internal one.(Image credit: Will Jones)
So effective is it that I assumed this was a tarmac SL8 at first glance. (Image credit: Will Jones)
In order to keep things neat the fork ships with an upper bearing, bearing cover, and a series of spacers. It is unclear how one would then plug the subsequent holes, but it’s a mark of how effective it is that the bike on the brand’s stand totally passed me by as I thought it was ‘just’ a Tarmac SL8 with a fancy paint job. It was in fact an SL7, running its hoses internally.
The brand’s representative on the stand was initially keen to point out that this could make bikes like the SL7 or the Aethos more aero, or at least cut a more modern look, but equally there are a fair few modern classics like the Cannondale SuperSix Evo HiMod (the one where the chainstays are not dropped) that could receive a modern overhaul.
In addition to this intriguing carbon fork system the brand had a load of hyper light goodies on show too, many of which I’ve included in my Rouleur Live tech gallery. An intricately anodised rear hub – impressive given it is a part of the bike so rarely seen by anyone other than the owner and their mechanic – along with a full titanium 12 speed cassette, seatposts, a 3D printed titanium bottle cage, and a blindingly light integrated one-piece stem cap and stem bolt combo.
There’s a long way to go before weight-weenie-ism takes back the ground it has lost to the aero brigade, but it seems EXS at least is doing its part to redress the balance.
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