It's Gold, Baby! Inside X-Fusion's Inverted Revel HLR Fork 5

The air sprung Inverted Revel HLR fork is the latest in X-Fusion's ever expanding lineup. This video shows us what's inside and how it's assembled.

The fork will be offered in a tapered 140-160mm travel option for 27.5-inch wheels or 120-140mm for the 29er crowd. The super wide version shown below is for the fat bike crowd. All forks have 34mm stanchions. It uses the same twin-tube HLR damper from the Vengeance, and features carbon stanchion guards, rebound, high and low-speed compression, and dual air pressure adjustments. Dual you say? As explained at the end of the video, the dual air system allows you to setup the beginning and ending stroke spring rate, so you tune the progressivity of the fork to your liking.

There will only be 200 of these made, at least initially. The fork will run a whopping $1776, so start saving up. A lifetime service package is available for an additional $124. Weight is 4.5-pounds.

While most forks have parallel steerer, stanchion, and lower tubes, the Revel is at an angle. X-Fusion did this to take up some of the offset required by the 27.5 and 29-inch wheels it's designed to fit.

So how'd they pull off an inverted design that's stiff? Through a combination of what they're calling the Gold-E-Lock system and 20mm LockX thru-axle system, the fork is reportedly stiffer both front-to-back and torsionally than anything else on the single crown market. Yes, even than a FOX 36, according to X-Fusion.

Gold-E-Lock uses a unique trilateral stainless steel keyway system on the sides of the uppers and stanchion to limit the effects of torsion. The keyways are fully lubed and floating in oil to prevent biding. If you remove the axle and wheel, you're not not able to spin the stanchions/dropouts like other inverted designs.

For more details, visit www.xfusionshox.com.