Factory Visit – Öhlins Suspension

Located just a short drive away from the Stockholm Arlanda Airport, is the birthplace of Öhlins Racing. Kenth Öhlins founded the company in 1978, with a classic story of coming to the realization he could build a better motorcycle shock.

Öhlins employs over 300 people, recently celebrating their 40th anniversary.

Kenth built the first shocks in his fathers machine shop, one of those machines is still present at the factory today.

The coil shock with a reservoir is carried  all the way through to today’s models.

Mounting the reservoir to the body allowed for practice eliminating the hose connecting the reservoir. The different color spring represents a different weight, allowing for more soft and supple beginning travel, and a stiffer ramp up at the end.

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The smallest shock ever made, for a 50cc Yamaha kids bike. Pretty cool stuff!

These days, Öhlins makes everything from RallyCross, to Cafe Racer suspension.

Seriously keep the keys to this guy hidden.

Öhlins has some pretty sweet scooter carts to get product and parts throughout the factory.

Equipped with a steering stabilizer from a Moto, because why not!

Rows on rows of inventory like this one continue to the left.

Large community dining hall, an awesome place where everyone can have a coffee and eat lunch together.

The very new and clean shop, filled with very old machines. This is where some of the prototyping magic happens.

When we visited, a production run of TTX rear shocks were being assembled.

Each step in the shock build is meticulously documented for later referencing if need be, as well as tested on a dyno.

Each shock has to come up green on this screen, otherwise it’s not up to standard.

Crates of yellow could be spotted throughout the Öhlins HQ.

The best part of our tour was getting to check out the new TTX DH Race Fork.

Thanks for everything Öhlins!

More info at: Öhlins