KHS Bike Technology
We don’t like to blind you with science, but have some background on the tech we use and our design philosophy.
The Right Technology
At KHS we strive to bring the best of technology, performance and value to every bike, every rider, and every budget. What is the “right” technology? Is lighter always better? What about stronger or stiffer tubing? Is one kind of suspension better than another? With so many options and so many variables, it’s easy to get lost in the latest technology trends. At KHS, we view technology a little differently than most bike companies. We don’t choose designs, materials, or technologies for fad or fashion. And we don’t force feed one technology on every type of rider at every level. We believe in function, and more importantly, we believe in performance, quality and value. That’s why our goal is to find the right technology for each type of riding, and each type of rider.
KHS Applied Technology
A lot of bike companies spend time and money following and developing fashionable technologies, only to “sell themselves” on one particular fad. Technology like this starts at the top, then trickles down. In turn, they need to recoup their investment, so their favored technology, in time, gets forced on to every bike they make. The engineers at KHS don’t start at the top and work down. They start with clean slate on each and every bike, analyzing the type of rider and type of riding of every bike at every price point. And we’ve got three key criteria we measure technology against: performance, quality and value. It’s more like engineering from the “rider up”. We call it KHS Applied Technology. To see KHS Applied Engineering, let’s look at an example of how our racers, product managers, and materials engineers work together to bring the very best to riders of all kinds, and of all levels.
Proven Performance Suspension (PPS™)
For more than 35 years, KHS has sponsored bicycle racers and race teams around the world. Our racers have won local, collegiate, national, and world championships. So when it came to developing suspension systems for our mountain bikes, we turned to our race teams. Our racers told us, categorically, their number one goal was to have great performance in suspension. But right behind performance was ridability, durability, and dependability.
That’s why KHS has, for over a decade, continued to develop and refine high performance suspension system for our mountain bikes. From short travel cross-country race suspension to long travel downhill bikes, and from World Championship winning models down to our entry-level mountain bikes, we choose a model-specific suspension design to enhance each bike’s ride. Each model is ride and race tested for performance. If a design doesn’t meet our standards, we don’t use it. We optimize travel and shock design, for each bike at each price point, making sure every bike has the performance, quality and value the rider wants.
*KHS uses the world famous Horst-Link 4-bar suspension design under license from Specialized Bicycle Components.
The benefits of the horst link 4 bar link rear suspension
There’s never been a more hotly contested suspension design on the market than the 4-Bar linkage design with the Horst Link. This design is the most valued and fought over suspension design in the world. The original design was developed by Horst Leitner at AMP research. The driving goal behind the design was to isolate braking forces from affecting the suspension performance. Horst bikes did not stiffen up or lift (brake jack) under hard braking. They were and still are to this day “fully active”. The icing on the cake was that the original bikes pedaled better than anything else at the time.
The original Horst patents were purchased by Specialized Bicycles and are selectively licensed to only a few companies in the USA, including ourselves. In Europe and Canada where the US patents don’t apply, Horst Link style bikes are the dominant suspension design.. Four bar bikes, are light, strong and can be built extremely stiff without the complexity and issues associated with other suspension designs, plus they don’t stiffen up under braking. If you own a suspension bike, you want the suspension to work. One of the worst traits a suspension bike can exhibit is to have the shock get progressively more locked out as you are braking hard into a bump filled corner. This is when you need the suspension most and this is just one of the areas where the 4 bar delivers and others can’t.
4-bar designs have the edge over anything else on the market. The ability to build light, class leading bikes at any travel range with ample tire clearance, great pedalling feel, in a fully active chassis with the highest level of durability is a combination that cannot, in our opinion, be matched by the competing designs on the market.
Most importantly we have used and evolved our horst link designs for more than a decade to maximise its trail effectiveness (through precise location/stay size/bearings/rocker design). Enjoy the ride!
Custom formed tubing
KHS custom forming is an effective method of shaping malleable metals such as aluminum into lightweight, structurally stiff and strong tubes. Using high pressure fluids with trap molding technology our aluminum tubes are custom butted and shaped to optimize performance and durability while saving weight.
Watch this space for more tech info…
