Working together with the suspension techs at HiRide, Pinarello has revamped the tiny suspension damper in their Dogma K8-S Classics race bike bringing electronically controlled hydraulic damping to the bikes that Team Sky will race at Paris-Roubaix this coming weekend. The version 2.0 damper update is said to greatly boost the performance of the lightweight road suspensions system, both in the move away from the prior elastomer damper and of course in the automatically locking out of travel on the fly – for zero power loss on the smooth sections of road in between the race’s notoriously brutal pavé sectors, then fully opening the 10mm of travel of the K8-S when the riders hit the cobbles again…
Two years after launching the rear suspended road racer, Pinarello are back on the cobblestones with a new electronic Dogma Suspension System (eDSS) that takes advantage of the flexible carbon chainstays to isolate the racer from some of the rough vibrations and impacts that are completely unavoidable when racing at high-speed in a pack over the rough cobblestones of northern France and Belgium.
The setup has been fitted to Team Sky’s existing Dogma K8-S race bikes and already race tested this week at Scheldeprijs in Belgium by Ian Stannard.
The priority of the new suspension project was of course giving the Team Sky racers the best of both worlds – locked out or fully open suspension – without the need to think about it. So the eDSS 2.0 automatically manages the lock out based on sensor input of the impacts transmitted through the frame. To make it work Pinarello has incorporated a system of 6-axis accelerometers and gyroscopes into the frame that detect the terrain type and adapt suspension character, all in a matter of a few milliseconds.
While the tech has just recently been finalized, Pinarello says it will be made available to buyers of the Dogma K8-S and K8-S Disc in the very near future. In the words of Fausto Pinarello “I am very happy with this new and ambitious project… The introduction of an electro-hydraulic control system establishes an important step forward in the technological evolution of our bikes, improving performance and increasing safety.”
