Competitive XC
Whether you're winning sprint finishes, heartlessly dropping your friends on a long climb, or even just trying to better your best personal lap time on a favorite off-road loop, the Epic is the ultimate bike for blazing speed and ruthless efficiency.
This type of velocity-driven experience is exactly what drives our development team to design and continually refine the Epic design to be the fastest XC bike on the planet, for the planet's fastest riders.
Key Features
- FSR Suspension
Specialized FSR suspension technology is the ultimate suspension choice for any offroad application, including XC racing. Combined with BRAIN technology, our exclusive FSR suspension design provides the best in fully active suspension performance across rough terrain. Because it’s fully active and independent, the suspension works perfectly under all conditions, and across all types of rough terrain, regardless of whether you’re braking, pedaling, or coasting. Further still, each frame component and the pivots that connect them are engineered to be ultralight weight, yet still retain the strength needed for faultless reliability and lateral rigidity. - Optimized Radius Engineering (O.R.E.)
The unique shape of the downtube and toptube on every Epic plays a major role in their strength, light weight, and performance. By manipulating the shapes of these tubes, Specialized engineer Jason Chamberlain aligned added material with high load areas (like the sides of the down tube), while simultaneously maximizing weld surface area for optimal stress distribution. By putting a longitudinal radius in the down tube as it approaches the head tube, the need for a gusset is eliminated, thus increasing strength (due to less welding) while decreasing weight (since less material is required.) - Brain Inertia Valve Technology
The Brain is the only system to automatically provide hardtail-firm efficiency on smooth terrain, and fully active suspension in rough terrain. Conceived by Specialized and put into practice by Fox Racing Shox, Brain is a patented and exclusive suspension technology breakthrough that complements our proven FSR design. Using an inertia valve, the BRAIN automatically changes the compression circuit based on the terrain, altering the suspension from a hardtail-firm pedaling platform on smooth terrain to a fully active FSR suspension any time bump or dip forces are encountered. It's a combination that has never been accomplished before; in fact, it’s not an overstatement to say that this is the Holy Grail of XC suspension design. - IQ Brain
"IQ" is another cool development that can be found in the S-Works offerings, as well as high-end models of the Epic. IQ stands for "Inertial Quotient", and it’s the blue adjuster dial at the base of the Brain. With the IQ feature, a rider can adjust how large an impact is required to "open" the Brain, as well as how long the shock remains "open" after the last impact it registers. At the most sensitive setting, the IQ will allow the Brain to open on super-small bumps as very low speeds. At the least sensitive setting, the impact required to "open" the Brain is quite substantial. - Frame geometry adjusted on all models to accommodate 100mm travel front forks.
- Weight of Brain rear shock reduced by another 30 grams.
- Oversize stem & bars on all models.
- New dual-compund Fastrak tires feature incredible low rolling resistance with superb cornering traction.
- Flat bars to keep lower weight in the front and better suit 100mm forks.