At Chris King, we design and make our own bearings in-house. They are the foundation of everything we sell, and producing them ourselves gives us full control over the entire process to manufacture bearings that are purpose-built for use in our components. This allows us to design products that not only perform better but also have greater longevity. Every single Chris King bearing is inspected and assembled by hand.

Unlike common radial bearings, we build sealed angular-contact bearings that allow for adjustment as they are used. Rather than wear out, our bearings wear in; like a fine wine or a quality guitar, they get better with age. All of our bearings are user-serviceable without special tools. Simply remove the snap ring and seal, clean, and re-grease the bearing for a lifetime of faithful rolling.

We live by the ideal that a product is not worth making unless you make it better. When developing a rear hub, many engagement systems were tried and the RingDriveTMprevailed as the best of the best.

The system consists of three primary parts: the Drive Ring, the Driven Ring, and the Driveshell (freehub). The design allows us to move the engagement mechanism inside the hubshell, inward of the large hubshell bearing, allowing it to have more contact area than a traditional freehub design, and better mitigate torque from the drivetrain. The Drive and Driven Rings are made of heat-treated stainless-steel and have 72-points of simultaneous engagement (45-points in the R45 road hubs). These provide ample, positive engagement, and are capable of handling a torque load of over 800ft/lbs, three times greater than other high end hubs we tested!