Minnesota’s Wilde Bikes has a new Dark Star mountain bike and a bitchin’ new rigid fork. The new Dark Star is a steel hardtail that Wilde designed for a 120 to 130mm travel fork for all-around trail riding. The Dark Star doesn’t exactly follow the current MTB design trends of long wheelbases and slack AF headtubes. No, it’s running its own game, and it looks pretty sweet.

Plus, Wilde’s also launching a killer new rigid fork today, as well – dubbed simply the Future Proof Fork. But, we’ll get into that later.

Wilde Dark Star steel trail hardtail mountain bike (Photos / Wilde Bikes)

The Dark Star is a steel hardtail that’s built with a set of custom-drawn, butted BOSS tubes. It also sports Transmission-compatible, UDH-equipped sliding dropouts for those who would want to run it as a single speed instead. Or just for those who want to tweak the Darkstar’s chainstay length and overall wheelbase.

Some would suggest that the new Dark Star is a downcountry bike, but Wilde would rather just call it what it is, “The perfect all-around MTB for daily off-road riding” with geo that’s “fun, fast, and playful“.

Let’s check it out.

That Wilde Dark Star

When Wilde designed this bike, they wanted it to feel fast as soon as you started riding it. They also wanted it to just be nimble and fun. The Dark Star rocks a 66.5-degree headtube angle, which Wilde thinks is the perfect sweet spot between descending confidence and slow speed maneuverability.

It also has a slightly elevated bottom bracket, making it easier to bunny hop and attack those tight and technical rocky sections. With the sliding rear dropouts, riders can adjust the chainstay length from 425 to 440mm – and anywhere in between – helping to fine-tune the bike to the type of terrain you ride.

Jeff Frane, the head honcho at Wilde Bikes, has this to say about the Dark Star: “To me, a short travel hardtail is all about immediate gratification, immediate fun from your house or the parking lot and all-terrain utility. It’s sharp handling, but not too twitchy. You could race it if you wanted to, but you could also have a heck of a time blasting jumps or even do some bike packing.”

BOSS Super Tubes

This tubeset is an exclusive for Wilde Bikes – made just for them to their “precise needs and priorities”. BOSS Super Tubes are asymmetrically butte, air-hardened, custom-extruded, seamless steel tubing.

Wilde describes the switch to a custom-made tubeset as opening up a world of ride feel possibilities now that are no longer ‘tied to the available off-the-shelf options’ when building their bikes.

This allows them to push the boundaries of strength and weight without being held back or limited by the available tubing. So, that means that whatever they want as far as tube diameter, wall thickness, or butting profile for a certain application, they can just make it.

For instance, they can do “outlandish and techy stuff” like not using a gusset at the downtube/headtube junction on the new Dark Star, while still delivering extra strength. Wilde says the reason for the lack of a gusset is “that the steel downtube itself is asymmetrically butted at the headtube junction.” That means the downtube is a lot thicker at the bottom of the tube where it meets the headtube.

The result being heavy-duty reinforcement, but no need to weld an additional gusset there. That can actually equate to overall lighter weight, as well as keeping the amount of heat-affected zones on the frame to a bare minimum.

Dark Star Geometry

“Fast, aggressive, and playful trail geometry. Our ideal blend of fun to pedal and easy to rip”. 

Dark Star Frame Pricing & Key Features

Retail price: $1200

• BOSS premium butted steel Super Tubes
• Sliding dropouts for adjusting chainstays/wheelbase or single speed operation
• UDH-compatible
• max 29×2.6” tire clearance
• Bottle Mounts: two in main triangle on Large and X-Large, one on Small and Medium
• Three-Pack Mounts: Anything Cage mount under teh downtube on all sizes
• Top Tube Feed Bag Mount
• Stealth Dropper Routing

The Dark Star is made at ORA in Taiwan.

Don’t forget the Wilde Future Proof Fork

If Wilde had their way, everyone that bought the Dark Star frame (or any hardtail, really) would buy a rigid fork to go wth it. They hate that there is a possibility that your new hardtail will be considered obsolete in 5 years, if your suspension fork maker replaces it with the next-best-thing with who-knows-what new standards, or you simply don’t service it and performance gradually wanes.

But, when your hardtail MTB is paired with a rigid fork it gets transformed into a useful tool for simple transportation or even a bikepacking bike.

There has been a resurgence of 30+ year old hardtails getting resurrected and used for all sorts of things. Wilde thinks the Dark Star with the rigid fork is like that, but better. You see this is more fun already, thanks to its modern geo.

Truly Suspension-Corrected

If you took a 120mm suspension fork (axle to crown of 531mm) and subtracted the 25% (30mm) for sag, you’d get a 501mm axle to crown measurement.

And so, that’s exactly what the Wilde Future Proof fork’s ATC is, 501mm.

Wilde thinks this makes perfect sense as the baseline to optimize the handling of the bike and for the ideal length of a rigid fork partner. Most aftermarket forks use an old, outdated standard of suspension correcting the rigid forks based on bikes that had 80-100mm suspension forks.

Remember such short travel forks?!

Most hardtails nowadays have front suspension forks with at least 120mm of travel, or sometimes more. Hence, the more useful axle-to-crown measurement of 501mm, making pairing the Future Proof fork with modern hardtails a smoother, easier transition.

Future Proof Fork Pricing & Key Features

Retail price: $250

Features

• Suspension corrected for frames spec’d with 120-130mm forks
• Segmented steel construction
• huge max 29 x 2.8” tire clearance
• Three Pack Mounts on each leg
• Full-coverage Fender and Rack Mounts
• Mid Blade Mount for lowrider racks, too

Specs

• 501mm Axle-To-Crown height
• 44mm Rake
• Straight 1 ⅛” Steerer (works with oversized base plate for tapered headsets)
• Long steerertube length to fit almost any bike and upright cockpit setups
• Boost 15x110mm thru-axle spacing
• Weight: 3lbs

WildeBikes.com