Written by Sherwood Gibson - Owner/ Designer of Ventana USA

I am a fabricator, a machinist, a welder, an engineer, an avid cyclist, and above all an artist. I like to build cool stuff, and I especially relish seeing others benefit from my passion for excellence. I have taken my passion and infused it through out the Ventana brand and product line. Our frames are beautiful, our designs are elegant, and our manufacturing capability and execution is legendary. At Ventana we design and build artistic pieces that can be enjoyed as much on the trail as at the post ride hang out. There is a common thread that runs throughout our product line that I call the Ventana Philosophy. The make-up of that thread is detailed below.

Tube Selection
We tailor our tubing selection for each specific frame design based on its intended use. We select between Ventana proprietary, 6061 custom butted, and straight gage US manufactured 6061 aluminum tubing allowing us the flexibility to build frames that will perform up to our standards without the penalty of retaining excess weight.

To further enhance our tube performance, we sometimes manipulate the tube profiles to various shapes for better stress distribution, and increased chassis stiffness. We have invested a lot of effort into developing tube shaping techniques that will yield the performance we demand without over stressing the raw tubes. Consequently when one of our new designs requires some tube shaping, we have the technology to design and build the form tooling in-house to do it. This really aids in the artistic flow and lightweight performance of our designs.

In addition to proper tube selection and shape, we will sometimes add custom gusseting at high stress areas to boost frame life and increase strength locally. We have found this to be the most efficient use of materials by putting extra metal only where we need it and not where we don't. Like our tube shaping, we have developed extensive technology to form our gussets to the desired shapes required for optimum benefit.

Final Assembly
Our final assembly process is intense. We machine the head set and BB bores, faces and threads, and ream the seat tube on our frames after powder coating to ensure the best fit. So, your seat post will slide smoothly, and lock down securely, your head set will fit squarely, and hold tightly, and your BB will thread in easily. We not only align our complete frames prior to delivery, we align each and every welded component as a sub assembly prior to final assembly. It is a tedious process that rewards our efforts with frames that roll straight and is a key factor in establishing the celebrated Ventana ride.

Lateral Stiffness
Lateral stiffness is paramount to a successful Ventana FS frame design because it doesn't make sense to us to have a super efficient pedaling platform if you forsake lateral stiffness and can't make the turn at the end of a straight away because the rear end of your bike is too flexy.

Don't believe it? Try this, take any FS bike, grab the seat post down low, and push sideways on the top of the rear wheel. Does it flex? Of course it does, but how much? Some suspension designs significantly more so than others and all of them more than a Ventana. And why is this so important?

Aside from wheel flex, the stiffness of the rear end of a full suspension frame completely determines how well you will be able to negotiate a high-speed corner. A frame that is stiffer laterally will always out corner a more compliant foe because it is less influenced by the sideways forces applied when your rear wheel encounters a rut or rock while pushing the limits of traction and/or sliding.

It's like walking on the side of a hill with your shoes untied. Sure you can do it, but it's a lot easier and more stable with tight shoes and a solid connection between your foot and the surface you are trying to cling to.

With the lateral stiffness of a Ventana, you can hold higher, tighter lines on off-camber terrain, and can jump and slide more predictably because your rear wheel will more closely stay in the plane of your front triangle instead of flexing outward and giving the tire enough outward bite to throw you out of your groove. Try this on your next ride when you encounter an off-camber rutted turn, at speed, and see if you don't agree.

Pedaling Efficiency
Pedaling efficiency is an important aspect in the Ventana design process because if you don't have an efficient pedaling platform, more energy is used up than is absolutely necessary to get from point A to point B. But, many manufacturers feverishly strive for the holy grail of pedaling efficiency while turning a blind eye to some of the arguably more important aspects, like lateral stiffness, of a well-designed full suspension (FS) frame.

This is why many FS frame designers choose "Pedaling Efficiency" as their mantra and is also why the "Horst Link" (HL) has gained so much popularity over the past many years.

The simplified effect of the HL design application in real-world FS designs is an altering of the rear wheel axle path from a single arcing motion centered around the main pivot to a serpentine "s" shaped path. The HL gains in pedaling efficiency when the axle is moving rearward counteracting the forward arcing path of the lower swingarm. This is achieved by removing the rear axle from the lower swingarm, adding a pivot between the main pivot and the rear axle's point of attachment (dropout) and reattaching the axle to the upper shock stay. The efficiency of the HL can be further accentuated by lengthening the suspension rocker links and efficiency peaks when the rockers become the same length (pivot to pivot) as the lower swingarm.

As it practically applies to a FS bike frame, however, the net effect of adding the HL pivot and using relatively long rockers is a gain in pedaling efficiency over only a small portion of the total axle path and a huge loss in lateral stiffness. And as you already know, lateral stiffness is extremely important to the Ventana ride.

Ventana's pedaling efficiency is achieved with careful placement of the main pivot. A FS frame will be most efficient when chain load induced forces (CLF) do not compress or extend the rear end's suspension motion significantly. This phenomenon is often referred to as "bob."

A non-HL single pivot bike, like a Ventana, will not "bob" when the CLFs align and pass directly through the main pivot. Our goal is to have this CLF alignment take place when the bike is ridden in the gear of choice for most riders (the middle chainring, on our XC frames). When the CLF passes below the pivot, the suspension will have a slight stiffening influence as it applies a counter rotation torque on the swingarm proportional to the magnitude of the chain load times the distance between the CLF and the main pivot. When the CLF passes above the main pivot it applies a squatting torque, which adds to suspension compression. CLFs are greatest in steep small-ring climbs and are the smallest when pushing the big ring in a sprint. Hence, we move the main pivot slightly lower on our XC designs to gain the best balance between small to big chainring gear combinations minimizing the CLF applied torque.

Structural Integrity
What good is a great handling bike if it hangs in the garage or sits in the dumpster because it couldn't hold up to you and your riding style?

This is the question we strive to answer every time we design a bike. We select the best tubing for each design based on the bike's intended use and its specific rider weight and capabilities. Ventana's owner, Sherwood Gibson has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and an extensive background education in welding and manufacturing that he applies every time he designs a new frame or frame component.

We design and manufacture every CNC milled component and welded assembly, for every Ventana, right here in our factory in Northern California. And with our semi-custom and full-custom build programs, Ventana is widely known for building the most robust frames in the industry. But our frames aren't heavy. On the contrary they are competitively light when pared against the frames of Ventana's competitors.

Sure, sometimes our stuff breaks, but after our extensive analysis of those rare cases is complete, we immediately apply what we learn to our next batch of production. And since we build everything in small batches, in-house, our success to failure ratio and application of the philosophy of continuous improvement is second to none.

Aesthetics
If you don't like the look of your bike, you are less likely to want to ride it and certainly won't hold it in high regard. Our customers love the ride and revere the aesthetic beauty of their Ventanas.

In the sixteen years Ventana has been in business, we have consistently been celebrated for our classy lines, succulent paint, manufacturing attention to detail, and "Electric Sex" welds by customers, trade publications, and peers alike. This has been achieved by painstaking application of our understanding that no amount of paint, decals, marketing slogans, or technical jargon can hide a poorly designed and inadequately built frame.

From our tube shapes, frame junctions and suspension links down to the last cable stop we build, every part that goes into a Ventana frame must meet our exacting standards for look, quality, and performance.

And we can meet those high standards because we actually build what we design with our own hands on our own factory under the watchful eyes of Ventana's owner, designer, and fabricator, Sherwood Gibson. At Ventana, we build art that you can ride with performance to match its heart stopping beauty, not cookie cutter bike frames with utilitarian features and lackluster style. In fact, we have many long-time customers who admire their worn out vintage Ventana frames so much that they yearn to hang it on their living room wall as a revered art-worthy piece rather than trading it in for a discount on a new one through our lifetime trade-in program.

We don't have specific model years or marketing driven designs because we strive to design and build great looking bikes with timeless features and sheer elegance worthy of the Ventana namesake. From the moment we fire up our CAD programs to the day you throw your leg over it and pedal off on your next adventure, you can be sure that your Ventana is second to none.

Weight
Frame weight is an often over-rated means of evaluating the merit of a bike design.

At Ventana we strive to reach a good balance between weight, life and performance. After all, for many of our customers, the purchase of their first Ventana is a culmination of years of lust driven savings and budgetary sacrifices. And we bare this in mind when we select the tubing, and machine the components that go into their Ventana. We design and build frames that last!

We can build super light frames. In fact, we have built hundreds of frames as light as two pounds for professional road racers with quads the size of tree trunks and lungs of steel. But those were disposable bikes with very limited life that had no chance of lasting beyond the racing season, and, they certainly weren't Ventanas.

For a Ventana frame, we tailor each design to match its intended use. From our rigid hardtails to our burly big travel DH rigs, we optimize each and every frame component to be its optimum weight for the "average" rider. Some designs use custom butted tubing, some straight gage, some ovalized, some gusseted, some not, but all are dialed just right so you can have confidence when you hit the trails that your Ventana will keep you going. And we feel so secure about our designs that we guarantee they will last.

Obviously, not everyone fits the description of an "average" rider. Some riders have special needs in fit, function, strength, weight, etc. So, if you need something different than our production geometry or designs, you should check out our custom frame build programs.