Three is good for most of thee: There's enough quality travel to smoke hardtail pilots, but most trailriders will find the Procaliber's travel to be too short.

During the last off-season, National Mountain Bike Series Cross-Country Champion Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski began designing this bike. An admitted hardtail holdout, JHK wrote two main goals on a notepad. It would have to weigh no more than 23 pounds, and the rear suspension must transfer horsepower as well as the Fisher Big Sur hardtail he had been winning on. Then he went about penciling a rough draft of Gary Fisher's new Race Day suspension platform.

JHK THE BIKE DESIGNER

Jeremy is unassuming and soft-spoken. So is his design work. For him to win on the domestic and world circuits only takes three inches of travel. A single pivot would do; a big, wide one just fore of the bottom bracket. It would be at the same height as the top of the middle ring. Pivoting from there would lock the suspension out climbing in the granny, and mostly stabilize movement when in the middle. But the suspension would stay semi-active when flying over ruts while powering in the big ring.

DID JHK REDISCOVER THE MONOSHOCK?

You bet he did. Cannondale, Santa Cruz and Haro have been winning races aboard this design for years. A mono is almost the perfect cross-country design. The high pivot pedals extremely well. It uses a forward pivot location, which puts more of the rider's weight on the rear suspension when standing and getting over the back. With rider weight, the mono remains mostly active braking downhill.

DOES JHK DESERVE AN ENGINEERING DEGREE?

The Procaliber frame sports nicely hydroformed 6000 series tubes, a stout swingarm pivot yoke forging, lightweight windowed dropouts, wishbone shock mount, and hourglass head tube. Maybe JHK even asked for the extremely cobby looking welds.

The downtube-routed cables look clean. For some reason, there is a leftover cable guide up by where the top tube connects to the head tube. A medium frame weighs a respectable 4.6 pounds. Gary Fisher offers the frame by itself for $2200.

BONTRAGER BONUS

Bontrager's Race Lite carbon hardware is absolutely great. The riser fatty bar has the perfect shape, and the seatpost uses a brilliant saddle clamp design. A nice bonus is the carbon fiber, Race XXX Lite stem. Even the Bontrager Race Lite Lux saddle stands out.

Jeremy likes to run double and sometimes even single ring cranks. So when he asked for a road-like, 2.7-inch bottom bracket width, that's what he got. The mono's elevated stays leave plenty of room for the narrow stance (Q Factor). Wider, 2.9-inch bottom brackets are considered the mountain bike norm.

HAMMERING JHK'S WORK

It's no surprise that NMBS #1 Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski retained Gary Fisher's heralded Genesis Geometry. A more than generous 23.9-inch top tube is mated to a short, 3.5-inch stem and wide, 25.8-inch bar. The end result is a chassis that retains a normal seating position. What Genesis (or JHK) Geometry does is push out the head tube more. It keeps the rider from overweighting the front wheel at speed and especially when pointed downhill. The front of the bike skips over bumps and is more agile in the rough.

The rider stays exactly centered and can easily weight one wheel or the other. A shorter stem like the Procaliber's is better mated to its wide riser bar. On singletrack, the Gary Fisher is one of the best behaving cross-country race bikes. It steers precisely climbing, hammering, or descending. Its comfortable, chest-expanding cockpit lets the rider do his job with more efficiency and effectiveness.

IS JHK's THREE INCHES ENOUGH?

We ended up doing most of our riding with the shock unlocked and pedaling off Manitou's Platform Plus technology. It pedals with a solid feel while soaking up bumps that slow down hardtails. When you flip the lever on the S-Type shock, it almost completely locks out movement.

Unlocked, you will never ask for more travel until riding on the edge of control down scary-rough descents. Here the three inches of movement come up short, and the smoothness of the monoshock disappears under hard braking.


Businesslike: Race Day is the platform that JHK designed to replace the Sugar. It's a more candid design with fewer pivots, less travel and lots of forward motion. The Manitou S-Type shock is brilliantly simple.

WHAT ARE JHK'S DESIGN IDIOSYNCRASIES?

1) Claimed to be 2.25- and 2.20-inches wide, the Jones XR tires measure 2.10 and 2.00 inches. That turns out to be a good thing for an XC race bike. 2) That being said, why put on a rear tire which indicates that it should be run with the knob's chevron pattern pointing backward? (Scooping dirt for more traction.) Racers will want to reverse it for easier pedaling. 3) If you have Stan's, why put tubes in tubeless wheels? With them it's hard to put the tire on the rim and very difficult to seat the airtight beads. 4) The weight of the complete bike is 26.1 pounds. This is too heavy for an almost $4000 race bike. 5) RockShox's Motion Control system works well and does away with the need for a remote Poploc Adjuster. The extra cable and bar-mounted adjuster add weight and complexity.

JHK's NEW WEAPON

This bike can be your own ultimate cross-county race weapon. Yes, Jeremy might have missed the mark when it came to weight. But the rest of the bike is as race-bred as you could ever ask for.

Price $3850
Country of origin USA
Weight 26.1 pounds
Hotline (800) 879-8735
Frame tested Medium (17.5")
Bottom bracket height 12.2"
Chainstay length 16.3"
Top tube length 23.9"
Head angle 70°
Seat tube angle 72°
Standover height 30.5"
Wheelbase 42.7"
Suspension travel (front) 3.1"
Suspension travel (rear) 3"
Frame material Aluminum
Fork RockShox SID World Cup
Shock Manitou S-Type SRL
Rims Bontrager Race Lite Disc
Tires Bontrager Jones XR
(2.25/2.20" f/r)
Hub Bontrager Race Lite Disc
Brakes Avid Juicy Seven
Brake levers Avid Juicy Seven
Crankset Bontrager Race X Lite
Carbon GXP
Shifters SRAM X.O trigger
Front derailleur Shimano XTR
Rear derailleur SRAM X.O
Chainrings Bontrager Race X Lite (44/32/22)
Cassette SRAM PG 990 9-speed (11-34)
Pedals Shimano M520 (not included)