Kona launches new bikes, including steel Roadhouse

Kona has released several new models for 2016, including road/all-road, touring, commuting and cyclo-cross models. Here are the highlights of the range.

Roadhouse

The Roadhouse is designed as a bit of a ‘go-everywhere, do everything’ steel road bike with hydraulic disc brakes. It’s built around a custom-drawn Reynolds 853 butted chromoly steel frameset that features a tapered head tube, the idea being to increase stiffness and control, with external headset cups.

The frame comes with 12 x 142mm thru-axle dropouts rather than regular open-ended dropouts and a quick-release skewer, and it takes Flat Mount standard disc brakes. This is the standard Shimano developed and others are adopting, and it appears to be the direction that the market is heading. The full-carbon Kona Road Endurance fork takes a 15mm thru-axle and a Flat Mount brake.

The Roadhouse’s geometry is fairly relaxed, the 56cm model coming with a stack (the vertical distance from the middle of the bottom bracket to the top of the head tube) of 596mm, and a reach (the horizontal distance between those two points) of 383mm. That means you’ll sit quite a bit more upright than on a race-style road bike.

The frame and fork can take mudguards so the Roadhouse could be a good option for year-round riding, and the ability to mount a rear rack adds to its practicality if you want to ride to work or have the odd night away on your bike.

The Roundhouse comes fitted with Shimano’s new RS505 hydraulic brakes and 140mm rotors.

The groupset is a real mix with a Shimano Ultegra rear mech, a 105 front mech and a Shimano non series (meaning it’s not part of a groupset) RS500 chainset. That chainset is compact (50-tooth and 34-tooth chainrings), matched up to a wide-ranging 11-32-tooth cassette.

The wheels are Novatec Road 30 Discs with new Schwalbe G-One tubeless-ready gravel tyres in a 30mm width.

The Roadhouse is available now at £1,699.

Sutra Ltd

Kona has added a Sutra Ltd to sit alongside its existing Sutra touring bike.

The Sutra Ltd has the same chromoly steel frame as the regular Sutra , so it has mounts for three bottle cages (the extra one under the down tube), a mudguard and rack. It has the same Project Two Disc fork too, with two mudguard/rack eyelets and bottle cage bosses in the low-rider position. The difference is that the Sutra Ltd is fitted with a SRAM 1x Rival groupset and hydraulic disc brakes.

Go to our previous article for a full rundown of SRAM’s 1x system. In short, you get a single chainring – a 36-tooth chainring on Race Face Aeffect cranks in this case – matched up to a wide-ranging cassette – in this case the smallest sprocket is 10-tooth and the largest is 42-tooth (so the rear wheel uses SRAM’s XD freehub body).

The wheels comprise WTB Frequency Team i23 Tubeless rims laced to Novatec hubs, and they’re fitted with 47mm Schwalbe Mondial tyres.

The Sutra Ltd is priced at £1,699.

Esatto Fast

Kona launched the Esatto disc-equipped endurance bike last year and now a flat-bar option has been added to the lineup.

Kona describes the Esatto Fast as “a speedy commuter bike laden with geometry and components that eat up asphalt for breakfast and spit it out all afternoon long”.

There’s an image for you!

The frame, which the Esatto Fast shares with the rest of the Esatto range, is made from butted 7046 aluminium alloy and it’s built to a relaxed geometry. The 56cm model, for example, has a 565mm top tube and a 185mm head tube. The stack is 594mm and the reach is 383mm, so you’ll get quite an upright riding position here.

The frame takes a 12 x 142mm rear thru-axle while the carbon fork is 15 x 100mm for security and stiffness.

The Esatto Fast is built up with a mostly Shimano Tiagra groupset, Tektro HD-M290 hydraulic disc brakes, and Alex CXDX wheels with 28mm Continental UltraSport II tyres.

The Esatto Fast is priced at £1,199.

Private Jake

The Private Jake is another new model but this one is a cyclo-cross bike – a race bike as opposed to a road-going CX bike.

The 7005 butted aluminium frame is built with short chainstays (420mm) – Kona says that this improves the power transfer and handling speed – and a slack head angle (70.5° and 71.5°, depending on the frame size).

The frame is single-chainring specific and the 12 x 142mm rear dropout is adjustable so you can run the Private Jake as a singlespeed if you like.

The frame features a tapered head tube and a PressFit 30 bottom bracket, while the routing for the rear brake and rear mech is internal.

The Private Jake comes with SRAM Rival 1 shifters and rear mech, Tektro Spyre mechanical disc brakes (160mm rotor front, 140mm rotor rear), and Novatec 30 Disc wheels. The tyres are 35mm-wide WTB Cross Boss, although there is clearance for 40mm according to Kona.

The Private Jake is priced £1,499.

For more info on the whole range, go to www.konaworld.com.