VeloNews Q&A: Cane Creek teams with Öhlins
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Cane Creek has a long history in bicycle suspension, starting with its role in manufacturing the original Rock Shox forks. The company went on to develop some of the lightest air shocks available, perfecting a novel Delrin seal technology and speed-sensitive valving that lives on in CC’s current Cloud Nine and AD air-sprung and air-damped shocks.
But the big news this year is Cane Creek’s partnership with Swedish suspension-maker Öhlins Racing AB, a company that dominates the field in high-end motorsports suspension. Starting with its first 250cc motocross victory in 1978, (only two years after the company’s founding in 1976), Öhlins forks and shocks have been a part of virtually every important world motorcycle championship, and, starting in 1993, on the auto racing side as well.
The first product from the Cane Creek/Öhlins partnership is the Double Barrel shock, a coil/oil design that incorporates Öhlins’ newest Twin Tube technology, which delivers greater control over rebound and compression damping. We talked with Cane Creek’s Joe Ward, vice president of marketing, and Tom Reeder, director of research & development, about the Double Barrel and the Öhlins partnership.
VeloNews: How did the alliance with Öhlins come about?
Joe Ward: Two years ago, we knew that we needed to come up with more shock technology, and being a small company our product-development resources are limited. So one day I was looking at potential partners and came across Öhlins’ website and saw they [had a U.S. office] in Hendersonville. I mentioned that there was this high-end, top racing-suspension company in the world nearby, and Brad [Thorne, president of Cane Creek] said, “I’ve got Öhlins suspension on my Ducati.”
We made a call to Öhlins USA, and got together just to meet and see if there was potential to work together. We learned that there are a lot of synergies between Cane Creek and Öhlins, between the company cultures and the ways the companies are set up.
VN: A lot of your previous technology was based on an air shock. Now you’re developing a more traditional coil-over shock.
JW: Yes, the quickest way to market with an Öhlins-Cane Creek partnership was to go coil/oil because that’s where the majority of their history is.
VN: So this is an entirely new technology for you?
JW: Correct.
VN:What is the first product that we’re going to see?
JW: The Double Barrel coil-over shock for downhill and freeriding. The twin tube shock design hasn’t been done very widely in the bicycle industry.
Tom Reeder: The advantage of the twin tube design and the root of the name is because there are two tubes in the main cylinder, an inner and an outer. What that enables you to do is send a greater portion of the oil for damping through the valving that’s controlled externally, because as a pressure stroke begins the oil is forced through the valving up here and flows back between the two tubes to the back side of the piston. That’s the twin tube advantage. Other shocks with a single tube force that oil to flow through the piston and you don’t have a direct control over the damping characteristics. So the twin tube design enables you to have a far greater range of control through the external adjustments on a shock.
VN: And what are the adjustments?
TR: Preload on the spring. On the valving, you can control compression and rebound and also a stroke adjustment that controls the sensitivity to pedal-induced motion.
VN: What was Öhlins’ contribution to the design?
TR: The majority of it. They have the expertise in this technology. This technology even to them is fairly new.
JW: This style of twin tube is only now just being used on their highest-end racing shocks. In fact, the development has really been at Öhlins headquarters in Sweden, and it is entirely new. When we showed it to the Öhlins guys in the U.S., they said, “Wow, you’re getting that? That is entirely state-of-the-art.” It turns out that the Indy-car scene is clamoring for these style shocks now; they just arrived [for car racing] in August.
VN: When will you start shipping?
JW: Projected is early spring ’05.
VN: Will the Öhlins name appear on the product?
JW: Not on the product itself, but the relationship is widely known and will be promoted. We will be manufacturing it and we will be responsible for quality control.
VN: Once you have it in production, what comes next? Is there an Cane Creek/Öhlins fork in the future?
JW: We haven’t talked about that yet; there have been some broad plans laid out and they involve suspension systems.
Öhlins is not a shock maker, they're not a fork maker, they are a suspension systems company, and so that's how we're approaching it as well for the bike market. And the relationship is two-way, because they are developing some revolutionary suspension products for the motorcycle market and Tom has a good knowledge base in the seal systems that they are investigating, so we are providing assistance to them on that project.
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