First Look: The Aper KOMPace Has “Rising Pivot Technology”
Aper is a startup bike brand from Greece, founded by two mechanical engineers, Nikos Lamprou and Giorgos Kostopoulos. Aper is Latin for wild boar, which roam the Erymanthus mountains in Greece near where the company is based. Their first bike, the KOMPace, is a 160 mm travel enduro bike with something they call “rising pivot technology”.
Suspension
The axle moves up and backwards throughout the whole travel range, thanks to a virtual pivot point that moves upwards and back as the suspension compresses. One of the most extreme high-pivot enduro bikes we’ve seen recently is the Forbidden Dreadnought, which has an axle path that moves backwards by 30 mm over its travel range. The Aper’s suspension system has 45 mm of rearward movement over its 160mm of vertical suspension travel.
It achieves this with a main pivot that slides on a linear rail (somewhat like Yeti’s Switch Infinity system), which moves up and back at a roughly 45-degree angle as the suspension compresses. A link connects the rear triangle to the mainframe and helps define the axle path, which curves upwards very slightly as it moves back and up through the travel. The 60 mm stroke shock is mounted such that it slides parallel to the rail, minimising rotation at the shock eyelets. An idler pulley moves with the swingarm, minimising pedal kickback and keeping anti-squat levels in check.
Aper doesn’t have anti-quat or anti-rise numbers to share just yet (I’ll update this article when they do) but it’s safe to say that the anti-rise (the effect of braking forces to compress the suspension) will be on the high side.
Geometry
Aper is offering three sizes, each of which has two BB height/frame angle options thanks to a flip chip which is located on the lower shock mount. Aper says the flip chip can be used to run the bike with a 27.5″ or a 29″ rear wheel. However, the geometry chart shows a 9 mm difference in BB drop between the settings, and a 27.5″ wheel is 19 mm smaller in radius than 29″, so the geometry won’t be fully compensated. So, it’s sort of a halfway house between a geometry adjuster and a wheel-size compensator.
According to my calculations, with 29″ wheels in the low mode, the BB height will be around 348 mm; with a 27.5″ rear wheel in the high mode, it will be around 338 mm. Both fall within the normal range.
Construction
The frame is CNC-machined in-house out of 7075 T6 aluminium (somewhat like Pole’s bikes). It features a bottle mount with a claimed one-litre capacity, SRAM UDH hanger and an anodized finish with a choice of colours. The rail system benefits from a maintenance grease port. The claimed weight is 4.080 g (S1, w/o shock). Maximum seatpost insertion depth is as follows: S1: 345 / S2: 356 / S3: 367 (mm) *values valid for most shocks. (These values are higher than those published in the press release and the original version of this article).
The Aper KOMPace is available to preorder now at aper-bikes.com. The price is €3,469 for the frameset including headset, seat clamp, chain device, thru-axle and idler, for orders placed before December 31st.