Originally Posted by
retroshifter
thanks for the suggestion. I’ll look it up when I get home. Definitely an 80 or 81 412 based on serial number. Just wanted to give OP heads up that the lower model Treks of that vintage were probably made by someone else, but still really nice.
I wonder where you got the idea that Trek was outsourcing frame production in the very early 1980s. They were selling respectable numbers of frames in those days, but only compared to other boutique American frame builders. Their sales were laughably tiny comparted to all the conventional bike shop brands.
The shop where I worked was the first Trek dealer in Maryland and was selling the bikes in those years. The frames were definitely built by Trek at their factory in Wisconsin. (Note that the frames were built in the factory but not the bikes. In the early years, Trek sold their bikes as kits, with the frame and fork in one box and the rest of the components in a second box, so bike shops had to build from the frame up.)
I believe that the first Trek model not built in Wisconsin was the 300 (or 330; can't quite remember the model number), which was added to the lineup over 5 years later.