A lot has been said about Chris King Precision Components: bicycle jewelry... precision defined…gorgeous, but so expensive…worth every penny…too expensive...environmentally responsible…finicky - you need proprietary tools to service them… Some people love them; some people think they are nothing but hype. What’s the real story?
Words and Photos: Colin Meagher except where noted
Chris King: The Turning Point
In the '70s, a sometime bike builder and machinist in Santa Barbara, California, named Chris King sought to find a better path. It was the era of flower power and free love. Mountain Bikes didn’t yet exist. Road biking fandom was innocent of the drug-fueled scandals of today. And bicycle headsets pretty much sucked.
Chris grew up well entrenched in that hippy culture. “California was full of hippies and tree hugger types. I was just one of those guys,” stated Chris, as we discussed his formative years in becoming the industry icon that he is now.
At this time, Chris was working to pay the bills, welding up a few frames to feed his bicycle centric passion, and (of course) riding bikes. In his spare time, he’d tinker with bits of bikes in the machine shop, and share those bits with his fellows at the “pro” bike shop in Santa Barbara. A then well established individual in that shop who was normally disinterested in Chris’ bits finally took aside this young Chris King and offered him a piece of what is now sage advice:
| If you really wanted to make something cool, you'd make a better headset. |
He then went on to explain what was wrong with current designs, and off Chris went.
“We tested one of the early ones on a guy who raced in Europe all summer. He deliberately rode it loose almost the entire season,” recalled Chris when I toured the Chris King facility this past February. “When he got back, we tightened it up, and it was perfect. Mind you, this was in an era when guys who rode a lot would go through a headset a month. On the road, of course—mountain bikes didn’t exist yet. We were all blown away.”
Baby Steps, Dumb Luck, and the Advent of the Mountain Bike
How did King do it? By his own admission, he ‘stumbled’ into it. Chris worked in a medical tool manufacturing facility. Some of those surgical devices relied on bearing assemblies, and since they were designed for surgical procedures, they required absolute precision. However, the process of continually sanitizing the devices during surgical procedures would essentially “kill” the device by spoiling the grease in its moving parts, requiring it to be sent in for service. As luck would have it, the bearings cast off from the warranty service department’s repairs were “about the right size for a headset.” And since the surgical sanitization procedure killed off the lubrication, but not the bearings, Chris had a ready supply of cast off surgical grade cartridge ball bearings to work his magic with.
Consider that the bearing assemblies of the time used absolute crap for material. If it had been wine, it’d have come in a leaky box that even your most down trodden wino’d pass on. Even the good stuff of the time—the then revered Campagnolo steel-race headset, while mechanically sound, was prone to failure within a season for the simple reason that the materials were not hardened enough to withstand the rigors that cycling placed on them. Now, all of the sudden, Chris was making a headset that was a vintage wine of the finest quality. Because his was made using surgical grade material that was hardened all the way through: crème de la crème. And then some. Once word of Chris’ incredibly durable headset trickled out, demand—and a very limited production—followed.
And then along came the mountain bike. Many cyclists snubbed this upstart way of approaching two-wheeled transport, but a fair number of Chris’ customers were game to give it a go. But the cheap headsets of the era would literally last a day or so “klunking” on the local fire roads. It was only a matter of time before the riders in the know were pulling their King headsets from their road bikes to place in their new “mountain” bikes. And the legend began.
Manufacturing Should Not Destroy in Order to Create
Chris King went into business making headsets and doing contract machining in 1976. It wasn’t overnight success, and King was forced to step away from his first love of building bike frames (since resurrected with the Cielo line of craft Road, CX and Mountain Bikes); but in time, he was able to focus on manufacturing only cycling components. The best cycling components he could - but with an ethic behind them.
| Manufacturing isn't just about making the very best final product; it's about responsible management of the process through every step. - Credo espoused on the King website |
In a nutshell, the Chris King credo turns industrial manufacturing on its head. It is manufacturing with a conscience, with an eye towards sustainability. Heavy industry is typically anything but that. It is creation that comes with a heavy dose of destruction. But King Components does its best to mitigate that destruction where and whenever possible during the manufacturing process and always with an eye towards a greater good.
“Doing this whole manufacturing thing… I figured ‘this kind of stuff goes on.’ You can either avoid doing it and be idealistic to that point, or you can say ‘I’m gonna find a better way to do that’,” mused King. “Doing it with a conscience, right? Knowing that I worked well with my hands and knowing that I worked well with this kind of (sustainable) thinking… I made that choice to pursue that [sustainable manufacturing]. I just looked at it with the thought that, ‘this comes to me easily, so why not pursue it? But let’s find a path through it that makes sense’."
This is the ethic that makes King products so unique. Yes, his components are manufactured with precision in mind: every part uses the best materials possible and they are touched by hand multiple times during the creation process, making for an insane level of quality and control. The key, though, is that every part is created with the concept of sustainability in mind: all waste manufacturing materials are recycled to a degree virtually unheard of in industrial manufacturing—98% of his waste lubrication is reclaimed and re-used; waste water enters the sewer system nearly drinkable. Each step along the way allows for creation of an end product that, if properly maintained, will last the lifetime of a bike or more, thus creating an even smaller footprint than a similar but ‘disposable’ component that needs to be replaced constantly.
Ethical, Expensive - and Economical?
Pure and simple, King’s approach to manufacturing costs money up front. But in the long run, it actually costs less, both to your wallet and to the environment. How? Do the math: on the one hand, you can purchase one headset that costs $130 or so retail and lasts 10 years or more if properly maintained. Usually more. Or you can purchase a $30 headset that lasts for a year or less. Yes that’s $130 up front, but over the course of five years of $30 headsets, it’s a net savings financially as well as significantly less waste material entering the environment. Even if you don’t really care about the environment, you can’t argue with the economic savings of purchasing one component one time vs. multiple times.
Sustainability. Quality. Precision. Conscience. This then, is Chris King. It is not only each and every component that bears the name Chris King, it is also each and every person putting time in at the former coffee roasting house that now houses Chris King Precision Components and Cielo Bicycles. And King's ethos extends to his employees as well. Over the course of 2011, King employees commuted to work 70% of the time by bicycle. And there's a readily available reason to ride in: riding miles for cafe credit and vacation days.
"Riding miles are determined by how far away you live and what mode of transportation you are taking. I live 6 miles away and get $4 a day in cafe credits when I ride to work," stated Dylan VanWheelden, CK's PR point man. "Additionally, twice a year, CK has a month long commuter challenge that rewards employees with time off based on a percentage of the commuting they do by bike. Chris gave away almost $28k in 2011 in cafe credits, and awarded 230 paid days off in return for commuting by bicycle."
“I believe that you can’t just isolate yourself away on some commune,” states Chris in a measured tone. “The ‘let’s just live off the land mentality’ - that was pretty popular back when I started. That’s what a lot of them [hippies] did. But the rest of the world goes on around you. And it’s raining pollutants onto your compound when that happens. So what do you do? You gotta work with the system if you want to effect a change. And this,” he says, gesturing at the factory surrounding him, “is the result of that thinking.”
Follow a Chris King Hub From Bar Stock to Final Assembly
We followed the life-cycle of a Chris King hub from its origin from a length of aluminum bar, through final assembly at the factory. The process moves along with quiet surety and there are quality-control checks at every step along the way. Entire batches of finished parts have been rejected in the past simply because the color of the anodizing was not a correct match. Over the top? Perhaps, but CK has never wavered from his best-or-nothing approach to manufacturing. As a result, King makes almost every part of his hubs and headsets in house - even some of the bearing assemblies.
King's Search for a Better Bottom Bracket
Chris King designed and produced a bottom bracket to the same high standards of his headsets, but the square-taper design was obsolete as soon as it was finalized. Along came the Octalink system from Shimano and the competing ISIS system from everyone else. That effectively tabled the creation of a King BB for the simple reason that King would have had to make two different bottom brackets from the ground up that met his standards. However, the arrival of the external BB and its oversize, tubular axle fit within King's ethos as a single BB design hat could be used to match up with Shimano and SRAM standards via an adaptor.
End of the Line at the CK Factory
With worldwide demand, CK has yet to need an advertising program, but as you may expect, King's no compromise ethos continues from the first slice of bar stock through shipping and receiving, where customers can mix and match colors and options - and in rare cases, obtain custom one-off treatments if the project warrants such extravagance.
I wonder if they could talk a bit more about environemntal concerns, who are their suppliers, do they use low-energy consumption shipping - I am all for hearing such marketing stuff rather than meaningless tech BS. I can pay more for company that does things in this way even though doing things right, usualy lowers costs, at least for bigger companies.
and for 2 bearings.. i still think they are a bit overpriced...
but to see how it rolls down there.. was pretty nice to see,..
And in general, MOAR OF THIS!
They did, but it was a video tour of Hope instead of text and photos.
but sad to say, I have always had poor results with their No-Threadset (headset), both for myself and for MTB customers here in the UK, and I switched back to using cheaper FSA headset with 0% problems!
Perhaps, now that the Dia Compe A-Headset patent has expired, and King have switched to using a floating compression ring (like most headsets) their legendary tolerances and bearing quality will survive longer than the short month I got out of both my 2 King headsets, no joy with the UK Distrib. "warranty department" either and both headset pressed using professional Park headset press tools
And CK or Hope are definitely on my to-buy list for the headset and bb (I have some Reverse hubs, pretty good stuff )
Now
Would someone like to give me a large some of money for a set of hubs?
DH bike - do you mean dual crown forks?
not seen this problem on bikes with dual crown forks because the leverage of the fork onto the frame's headtube is shared by the stanchions running through both crowns
its single-crown forks where the CK headset has really suffered, not for "wheels on the ground" XC riders, but more aggressive all-mtn and freeriders running 150-180mm single crown forks
this problem with the older CK top cap (using an integrated compression wedge and "o" ring) is well documented by real world riders - headset will not stay tight, constantly working loose, making clicking or knocking noises, starts wearing a deep groove into the fork steerer tube where the o ring sits on the headset top cap
and because the headset is constantly coming loose, the bearings start to take damage, as happened with both my CK headsets within a month of ownership
as I previously said, now the Dia Compe patent has lapsed, CK are now selling their headset with a re-designed top cap so hopefully this serious issue has gone away....but as all the new headset standards came onto the market and CK were slow to react, perhaps the market for CK headset is smaller than ever?
this is good information
I have seen this with Hope Pro II hubs, where the front and rear in "blue" are not a matched shade, because as you said, anodising is not exact unless the components are anodised in the same batch
there is nothing worse than custom building a "colour co-ordinated" bike with anodised parts, and then realised they are all "slightly" different shades of the same colour (i.e. red, blue or gold) because the human eye is very sensitive to subtle changes in colour shade
Yeah i mean fox 40's
"And ultimately bicycles made a lot of sense: super efficient, and yes, it's technology, but its one of the smallest (environmental) footprints that you can imagine as efficient transportation."
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the majority of CK products are NOT put on bicycles that are primarily used as commuters. Having a blingy commmuter is great if you have a safe place to lock it up, but if I buy one it will have to be a runofthemill klunker that won't attract theives.
CK parts are usually put on expensive competition or recreational bikes and recreational cycling (road and mtb), while better than say motocross, is not all that environmentally friendly. Many of us can't bike to trail systems, go on exotic cycling vactions, and fall into the "more, more, more" mindset when purchasing new parts. None of that is environmentally friendly.
Kudos to CK and Co. for doing an outstanding job, but I'm not going to label myself an environmentalist because I'm a cyclist or because I buy CK products.
Nr 1 buying a product made localy like Chris King or Straitline is a good thing to do in many ways
Nr 2 making certain customer choices expresses someones personality
In one shot you can buy something to do a good thing, to feel better about yourself, to show off. You decide why you do, what mainstream thinks about it - who gives a fk?! Just do the right thing and leave it there, if someone buys superstar hub - who gives fk?
People do fall into the logic that buying organic food, fair trade, local produced hubs, clothes, makes them moral individuals. I also believe so to some extent, but there is a certain limit to which you take those things and one of my favourite writers Raj Patel, shows that limit by this example: You really can feel great about buying a fairtrade tea in a supermarket instead of corporate Lipton tea.
Nr1 - supermarket in the way it operates is the total opposite of fair trade
Nr2 - fairtrade is better than slavery but!There are situations like: you go to India to a tea plantation with workers coming from two villages - one fair trade, one with slaverish wages. This cash is all good to them, when the company owning the field pumps all water from their wells to irigate plantation and people have almost nothing to drink so they buy bottled water.
I agree with everything you posted and I'm glad you put a lot of stress on buying local/Made in Your Own Country.
you both raise good points about the environmental issues
what would be REALLY interesting would be a factory tour of the typical Asian bicycle plant, their manufacturing footprint / environmental waste and the conditions their workforce are employed under
perhaps not the highest end manufacturers in Taiwan but an average plant in China, Vietnam, Cambodia turning up cheap bicycles
I am not ignorant to pretend these are slaves working in tin sheds off a paddy field, but some honesty from the bike industry which manufacturers the bulk of its production off-shore in Asia, would be interesting....
Its something that has been raised with large corporations, supermarkets, clothes retailers and even Apple computers!
I will get all of chris king products on my bike once i can afford them
Keep up the good work crew!
maybe some one can help me?
A precision part like a King headset is only going to work to 100% of its' capacity if you do your end of the install. In the case of this bike, that sounds like a headset facing.
The bearing cap on the kings is a good fit yes but its not perfect. Big hits and stuff (from longer forks) can knock it out of place. The split ring sits right down in there and doesnt move. The king cap can only go so far.
I think Chris thought his design want inferior to FSA/cane creek and obviously many many headsets dont have this problem. They introduced the scuff wahser but that wasnt the problem. They also recommended that you replace the bearing cap and scuff washer yearly.
Now they have the griplock as above.
Supposedly at the PUSH factory the have a few steerers where the bearing cap also scored them due to this problem.
Its quite naughty of king really to charge that much and then not give a shit that there is actually a problem. Griplock is £25 if you have an older headset which doesnt come standard with it!
Keep at it CK!
(and thanks for letting John Howe showcase his talents in your shop....he's like a kid in a candy store when he talks about his job.)
4 bikes later, and they're still riding like new.
What's really great about King is that they keep spare hub shells around so that if they don't have what you want built up, they will assemble it for you in a few days. Not a single other company has ever offered to do that for me or for a customer.
The pretty and strong ones have been added to their lineup for a while now.
I wonder if the workers have acess to a staff shop ?
Buying new "environmentally friendly" products isn't always environmentally friendly. If you don't need something, don't buy it. Te carbon footprint from producing products and distributing them is huge, ad can easily outweigh the gains made by being more environmentally friendly to run etc.
Although possibly not the best way to do something green with your money, by buying from these sorts of companies, you're voting with your money, and that's pretty much the only power we have left nowadays.
(I am sure I am missing a few...)
All CNC operations recycle cutting fluids,lubes and chips as a matter of standard operating procedure due to the cost. Maybe in the dark ages theywould toss it don the drain, but those days were gone long ago. To claim that this is now some hippie driven ethos unique to CK is just ridiculous. The meal thing is a nice perk, like lots of people get, this one is less of a perk since to get it requires you actually participate and support CK's core business.
While it's nice CK does some of this stuff, let's not assume he is the only shop doing this. All of them do, but they don't promote it as some collectivist vision of utopia.
More important question: Why did he move from expensive and massively enviro regulated California to much less expensive and busines friendly Oregon??
Pay a dowry...?
Communicate via a third party online community when they have more direct channels of communication...?
If you wish, I can help you with your issue... yet, I bet you can handle it yourself with pragmatism and their customer service department...
...This bit did make me laugh though "Road biking fandom was innocent of the drug-fueled scandals of today"... Apparently the author either conveniently forgot or just doesn't realize that drugs have pretty much ALWAYS been a part of road biking... even Merckx and Coppi were caught doping. The only thing that's changed is the media coverage and public spotlight now put upon 'dopers'.
No vaseline involved - I really, really don't get it, what kind of a problem you found in this article to go on Colin's ass
Leroybrown......thanks for your input. not sure if you're from Cali or not but political views aside, you seem to hit the nail right on the head. Too bad it would be a crime to hit this a*shole on the head.
You believe in progression of human race? Me too! It's just that I share one of final of mr Freud - we are still dangerous pieces of stupid crap and we should be controlled - I know he lost popularity in your country, unlike his nephew Eddy Bernays, and few others who believe that individual should free himself by doing whatever he wants, and relieve stress and express himself by buying stuff. Oh I know something about psychology as well... oh about riding it was - MendoBrando - what makes you so confident? I am a douche but I would not fk around that much without having some skills and fitness - at least I have abetter riding stance than bad leroy
P.S. I have nothing against farmers, I avoid supermarkets, buy local grown food as much as I can, and if not local then still organic, trying to support farmers that don't put their hands into toxic pesticides, herbicides, or soil depleting chemical fertilizers. I apologize for my misinterpetation of a word "redneck" - we have a saying in Poland, that the worst rednecks are not in country side but in capital.
I don't know anything about your riding style- true. But I can tell a few things about your skills basing on your pics. Now you don't know shit about Poland, and I know a lot about US, really, really a lot (mostly good things) - who should sht the fk up here? You probably know less about Poland that I know about Tennesee - how many languages do you speak?
Go tell that long tongue liar,
go and tell that midnight rider,
tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter,
tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down
tralalalala
Just shut up already, no one wants to hear about your ignorant views on government and business or how much you think you know about anything cause the reality is you don't know shit. Just go find some anti-capitalist fan club who might give a damn, preaching your ignorance on pinkbike is played out. Quoting Cash just makes you sound like even more of an idiot... Now run off and find someone who gives a damn.
Many people will lead many others to believe that a certain brand (for instance, King) are the best.
Strictly not true, for as long as there is money to be made, most markets will never have one 'best'.
The hubs are just Killer!
Anyway, and as the first guy, since I live in EU I suport and buy HOPE or RESET.
I bet somewhere some company has written 999year warranty.
Small print says - as long as it stays in its box
Really, who the ef runs through a headset in a year?
I can't justify spending the kind of money on a Chris King when there is no noticeable difference in performance between a mid level Cane Creek headset which retails for half of a CK headset. The rapidity of which new standards are being introduced means that any headset I run today will quite possibly not run in whatever frame I decide to purchase next.
I believe you 100%. Often with the old school brings good maintenence and good workmanship.
If i want to feel "the blame" i go to Starbucks.
Besides the awesome looks CK is not worth the money.
Freehub has a great sound but too much resistance, it feels like riding with dynamo.
and the price difference of the front hub, bb and headset is justifiable how?
so you want to tell me this is how normal freehub spins or is it also broken ?
Maybe CK is too advanced for all those wealthy people.
If spokes tension affects the body of an CK hub and you have to re adjust the bearings it means its pretty weak. I know only one hub that has this problem its novatec and its 70g lighter and 1/10 the price .
This resistance comes from the Ringdrive system not from the bearings, if that was the bearings they wouldnt last 10km.
All of those 72 engagement points have resistance penalty and do you realy need 800ft/lb ?
I prefer that my hub doesn't brake for me when i when I stop pedaling, certainty not for that price.
I understand what qality it has, but you don't realize that qality is not all.
Try comparing it to DT 240 rear hub, it weights 244g not 336g, it also has ratchet system, super reliable (in fact many people say they switched from CK to DT), you dont have to re adjust anything, and it's a lot cheaper.
Overall DT wins in quality by knockout, but CK is a master in PR and marketing.