TECHNOLOGY 3S DESIGN
For a bike to be fast, it must be aerodynamic, but also have the capacity to absorb vibrations from the road or jolts from cobbled sections. If these shocks are well-managed, the bike “ bounces ” less against obstacles, and speed can be maintained. Dampening vibration also helps increase the contact surface of the wheels on the ground, improving control and transfer of power. This initially seems like a contradiction: to be aerodynamic, a tube must be thin and profiled, whereas flexibility implies a flatter ( and therefore wider ) section. LOOK teams have resolved this problem by designing the seat stays not to flex, but to bend according to a specific axis. Rather than sustaining deformation on a vertical plane, the forces deform the stays horizontally. This allows them to retain an aerodynamic profile while ensuring excellent flexibility. This 3S technology functions perfectly with disc brake frames, as the brake caliper is not fixed to the seat stays but to the base. Rim brake frames required a different solution however. As the caliper is generally fixed to a bridge placed between the two seat stays, the advantages of the new technology would have been considerably reduced. Our engineers worked round the problem by completely dissociating the brake caliper from the seat stays : the caliper is attached to a specifically-designed carbon mount built into the seat tube. With this design, the 795 BLADE RS is the first road bike to offer the same vibration absorption between the rim brake and disc versions. ( Patent pending )
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