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Living Link™ Suspension System

re-imagined & reinvented

full-suspension technology

The Living Link™ system re-imagines and reinvents full-suspension technology to provide riders with multiple benefits over conventional systems.

We accomplish this by replacing the standard, maintenance-prone cartridge bearings with a highly-developed titanium leaf spring. We pair it with a finely-tuned air shock, which works in conjunction with the leaf spring, to harness the advantages of both. The Living Link™ leaf spring is both laterally stiff and vertically dynamic, providing a progressive flex through its range of motion. The result is a leap forward in bike handling, durability, longevity and pure fun.

Vertically Dynamic, Laterally and Torsionally Strong

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Compression Rebound
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Leaf spring is relaxed. The bike is at rest OR airborne!

At rest, the Living Link™ is relaxed, with no stresses imposed. As the suspension compresses, the carbon leaf spring flexes. When the rear axle reaches a point approximately halfway through its travel range, the leaf spring reaches its maximum flex. As the rear axle reaches full compression, the leaf spring relaxes again. The result is a spring contribution to the suspension system. Consider it a boost of superpower when you most need it on long technical climbs.

The Living Link™ also improves riding efficiency. It does so by enhancing the spring curve in the mid-stroke of the suspension travel. How? By working in tandem with the shock’s air spring to make the overall curve more linear in the middle of its travel. A more linear curve increases the suspension response in the mid stroke, where a bike spends most of its time. It’s simply a higher quality ride experience than any other suspension technology on the market.

Lighter Weight, Improved Durability, Guaranteed for Life

Let’s be honest, most modern suspension systems are pretty good—when brand new. But their ride quality quickly fades under real world riding. Not so with Living Link™, which reduces wear and tear by eliminating the most problematic set of bearings in typical multi-link bikes and replacing it with one titanium piece. That magical leaf spring means less maintenance, lighter weight, and one less pivot to impede efficiency. We love mechanics, but this suspension allows you to stay on the trail and out of the shop for many seasons of adventure.

The Living Link™ leaf spring is manufactured to maintain the strictest QC. And we use the same precise molding and CNC machining employed in the manufacture of ballistic military helmets and high-tech prostheses. This use of cutting-edge materials and carefully controlled manufacturing processes results in a leaf spring that can support the weight of two full size pickups. That’s pretty damn tough. So tough that we tested it in the laboratory to three million flex cycles without failure. That’s the equivalent of riding 7 days a week for 12 years. That’s some serious muscle.

Gluey Traction, Rowdy Descending

We are proud to live, work and play in the Rocky Mountains. The riding here is technical and rocky and aggressive. For riders of the Mayhem, that means your Living Link™ system has been battle tested on epic trails. We fine-tuned the Living Link™ to handle all the nastiness that the Rockies can dish out—both uphill and down. It delivers precision control on rowdy descents and gluey traction on technical climbs. That is a rare feat for other rear suspension systems on the market, which are designed to maximize performance in their “open” modes. The Living Link™ system was designed with an anti-squat response, which enables the rider to climb efficiently with the shock wide open. In addition, the kinematics of the suspension system provide a large pedaling sweet spot. The end game: you will ride more confidently both up and down.

On other suspension systems, pedaling performance is compromised if the shock pressure is too high or too low. Not so with Living Link™. It delivers efficient acceleration in a large range of suspension sag settings. Riders who like it super firm, as well as those who like it plush, are all rewarded with a bike that climbs like a goat with its tail on fire. We accomplish this holy grail of climbing efficiency and descending performance by finely tuning the leverage ratio curve to work harmoniously with high quality air shocks.





Living Link Tech

"Wheel Rate" Graph

Spot’s Living Link suspension is the defining feature that gives our bikes their unique, athletic character. At its core, the Living Link a leaf spring. But with advanced design, materials science and manufacturing technology, we deploy its spring energy to boost your ride.

The graph shows the relative force changes at the rear axle as the suspension moves from full extension to bottom out. It is a product of a few variables like shock design and positive and negative air chamber volume, air pressure, compounded by the variation of the frame’s leverage ratio, also expressed as “wheel rate” at different points in the travel.

The gray trace shows the force at the rear wheel if we replaced the Living Link with a simple pivot. The blue trace shows the force at the rear wheel when we introduce the spring contribution from the Living Link.



The leaf springs adds or subtracts force at the rear axle depending on the position of the axle in the stroke. As you can see on the graph, the strongest force contribution is somewhere around 25% of the travel, and the largest force deduction is somewhere around 75% of the travel. This serves to reduce the spring/wheel rate in the middle “half” of the travel, while effectively increasing the spring rate in the first quarter and last quarter.

Bikes that ramp up really aggressively are is great for landing big drops and give good load-and-pop characteristics. The drawback is how firm the suspension becomes in the mid stroke, relative to how soft it is at full top out. The suspension ends up working against you in the rough choppy bits, climbing and descending, because the spring curve doesn’t allow you to access the deeper parts of the stroke.

On the other end of the spectrum, a very linear suspension with a lowish spring rate will feel really good in the mid stroke, at the expense of firmness on stroke initiation, and will bottom out very easily.

We feel that mountain bikes work best when they initiate the travel easily at full top out, ride actively and predictably in the mid stroke, and resist bottoming out near full travel. “Flattening” the mid stoke with the leaf spring response allows the two ends of the stroke to do their job well, while providing a wide sweet spot of active response in the mid stroke.

The leaf spring is our way of creating an ideal spring curve for how we want a mountain bike to perform. We love crushing big descents as much as anyone, but we also love earning our turns and maximizing our miles per sandwich!

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