Trek Remedy Tech

Posted: Oct 28, 2008

The Remedy takes advantage of some pretty neat and free thinking idea's. Below you can find more info on ABP, FullFloater, and the E2 head tube!

Read on....

Thanks for following the link! Below you'll find some more in depth info on the Remedy!
There are a few things that set the Remedy frame apart from the crowd. Before we get into the build-up and review of my personal Remedy lets have a closer look at a few of its more noteworthy features. Those of you who caught the Remedy Interbike feature we posted have seen this before, if you haven't than have a look!

E2 Headtube
The Remedy platform takes advantage of a few neat features, the first being an E2 headtube design. While not entirely new to bicycles, it's actually trickle down goodness from their Madone road frame, it is the first time it's being used on mountain bikes. E2 headtube's have a dramatic hourglass profile, tapering from accepting 1.5" steerer tubes at the lower end to the traditional 1.125" steerer tubes at the top. The goal is all the precision of the bigger tube size, but with non of the stem compatibility issues or weight gains. Before you moan about another new standard, keep in mind that regular 1.125" forks can also be used without any hassle.

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EVO Link
Lighter, stiffer, and stronger are every bike companies goals as far as performance is concerned. With it's single piece design (well, it's two pieces welded together, really) it makes do without any bolt on cross members that add weight and complexity.


Trek used bearings with super-special long inner races in certain pivots. Why? Because then when I take it all apart I don't loose the teeny tiny washers that would be hiding in there otherwise.

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ABP Pivot
ABP takes the pivot which would usually be on the chainstay or seatstay, and places it directly around the axle itself. The intentions are to limit the change of distance between the caliper and rotor as the suspension cycles. Trek is claiming that "ABP allows the brake caliper to maintains a near constant relationship to the disc rotor, which creates less suspension stiffening under braking loads." In simpler terms it should mean that braking has very little effect on the Remedy's suspension action.

I've heard a load of questions about the Remedy, with most of them concerning the ABP system. No, there is no special hub needed. It uses a standard 135 mm quick release hub. The single proprietary part is the extra long QR skewer. The skewer does not hold anything together, just your wheel into the frame like normal.

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FullFloater
There are some real advantages to designing a suspension bike this way. One big advantage is being able to better tune the bike suspension rate due to now having two places to do it, the EVO link and the lower shock mount. Trek has built a slight falling rate into the Remedy's linkage that when coupled with the the Fox RP23 XV's larger than normal air can is claimed to give up that elusive bottomless feel to the bikes travel. Not having one end of the shock bolted rigidly to the frame also means that the front triangle can be built a bit lighter without having to worry as much about hard bottoming forces being fed right into the main triangle.

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It's amazing to me the amount of premium bikes out there that still use hardware store nuts and bolts to hold everything together, both for pivots and shock mounting. While it may not affect how the bike performs, you surely deserve more when these these things cost so much to begin with. It's nice to see more and more companies, especially the big ones, finishing off their frames with some nice hardware.

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Click HERE to head back to the Remedy feature!