With their premium line of suspension for cars, trucks, and motorcycles, there is a good chance you’ve heard of Ohlins or at least seen their gold products on race applications. This year at PRI, we visited their booth to see what was new.

Christer Loow was happy to inform us that pricing has come down on many of their kits, since they’ve made some changes to how you can order. First off, some of their kits can now be purchased without top hats/shock mounts so you can re-use the factory ones (application specific) or use your own. Of course you can still pickup camber plates and top hats/shock mounts from Ohlins. Loow told us, “Some customers like to go with different top hats or shock mounts so it works out pretty well.”

Christer talked to us mainly about their Road & Track series which feature the DFV, which stands for “Dual Flow Valve.” Basically, it’s a slick setup with a set of shim stacks that meter the flow from the adjuster so it can go through the main piston or the smaller secondary piston depending on the speed vehicle and size of the bump or dip. This creates a much better transition from low to high speed-meshing performance and comfort into one.

“If you drive [a vehicle] with one of our kits, you’ll feel that it’s firm and stiff like the way you want to feel but without feeling the harshness that you can get from some kits where you have too much low or mid speed dampening. You can get away with a much stiffer spring on our kit, but if you were to put an equally stiff spring on other brands you have to crank up the dampening so much that it will feel very harsh and it will rattle your teeth out. We can have great performance and comfort” Loow informed us.

“We have a lot of new applications that have been added that Ohlins tried to optimize as best they can which is why they’re slower to the market,” as Christer Loow explained. “We do proper computer simulation first, then we take it out on the road with a variety of surfaces. Then we take it to the track. We do that with every kit. We don’t just bring in a kit, fit it and send it out. Our engineers have a car for weeks to do this and develop our kits.”