Vintage components made in the USA?
 

Hey All, I'm trying to find the following made in the USA:

+Quill stem (thinking if IBIS or Litespeed are made in the US, but those are Ti only I believe, maybe Salsa ones?)
+Hood based brake levers (zero idea, nada)
+Shifters (again, nada)
+26.0 drop handlebars (made in the US)
+Derailleurs (other than Paul's if I can even find that one for sale)

Note that I do not mean sold by an American company (e.g., Ritchey, Sram) as many produce stuff overseas, but rather companies that really make stuff in the US (Paul, King, etc).

Any thoughts?

Nice, digging the Weyless pedals already!

Sorry, but early on American component makers were more or less limited to: Phil Wood, Weyless, American Classic, HiE. None of those made what you are looking for. By the 90s you had Bullseye, Paul, White industries, and quite a few others, but none that I recall made brake levers, handlebars, derailleurs or shifters -- except for the lovely and rare Paul derailleurs.

Matrix rims.

Controltech (USA) for stems and bars etc. They started in '89 so not super vintage, and they did MTB stuff first.

roadie build stuff-
Topline / Grafton cranks, Sampson Stratics Ti bottom bracket, Scott - Peterson brakes, Selle Anatomica saddle or go older Cool Gear, American Classic seatpost. Chris King headset... why not?!

I have a Serotta Ti quill stem but I'm not sure who or where made.

Rhino for a rear derailleur - around 1996 or so. Vision for bars, at least, they made a few aerobar setups with built-in stem.

DD

I am starting a small business making stainless quill and threadless stems. The fabrication will be done by me in Wisconsin. The tubing for the stems is designed by me and made by KVA in California and the binders are also machined in the US. DM me if you want some more info :thumb:

Vintage-wise, for quill stems you are looking at Salsa, basically. Litespeed had ti quills. Some of Trek's early 90s MTB chromoly quills were made in the US, I believe. Possibly some early 90s chromoly Ritchey quills as well.
There are some custom builders who will make you a one-off quill stem in chromoly or ti. Ti Cycles, Winter Bicycles, Chapman Cycles, Groovy Cycleworks come to mind.

Cool idea TenGrainBread. What is your brand and how do you sell them?

Cool stuff, keep it going please!

That Rhino derailleur is legit, where to get one?

Speaking of which, was the Precision Billet Proshift MTS derailleur made in the US?

To contribute: I believe other stems might include those from Cook bros and Moots (not sure if there is a quill version though)

Still cannot believe there are no hood brakes or shifting levers in existence.

The Ritchey situation is particularly interesting, how to know when they shifted their production overseas? I believe they also made 26.0 drop bars, but where these produced overseas??

Zipp components has some cool stuff but not as vintage.

Regarding Ritchey, it might be worth shooting an email to Ritchey. Tom Ritchey is still the CEO and might be able to shed some light from memory on this.

Moots did make steel quill stems back when they were making steel bikes. This is a late 80s steel Moots Mountaineer I saw a few months ago. The stem is fillet-brazed steel. The diamond braze-on entry for the canti cable stop is somewhat unique.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4416/...8cd998aa_k.jpg

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4363/...ff91baf5_k.jpg

Also, if you are interested in BMX quill stems, there were tons of companies making BMX quills in the US. Profile, S&M, Bullseye, etc... I believe Profile still makes a run of quills every once in a while, and Bullseye possibly as well.

Yes, really not much to pick from when it comes to American made components for C&V. And what little there is, is not easy to find as they just did not make as much as the foreign competition. Plus there were periods when the US just did not produce anything when it came to some components, like RDs in the early 80's (I think Paul's was from the early 90's?)
I actually considered building my 83 Davidson Signature up to be an all American bike with all American made components, but it will take so much longer to do so and most likely cost a lot more, even than the full Campy SR build that I decided to go with.
Still tempted though, to switch out the Campy SR crankset on it with the NOS Topline crankset I have in my stash one day.....:rolleyes:

The company is called Grapefruit Fabrications. We are setting up the workshop now and should have the first stems available in about a month and a half. We are still waiting on the tubing and doing some fixture set up. We'll be selling direct through a website and will also have a limited number of bike shop dealers. I'll post something on here once we have a prototype, if the admin is ok with it.

The tubing is KVA's MS3, which is a heat-treated 17-4 stainless alloy similar to Reynolds 953. It is extremely strong and will be built to a nice light weight without going super thin.

Didn't syncros make some stuff back then?

In the vintage scheme of topic, it would be fun to discover oddity or prototype parts. One from the 1970s would be Allen Armstrong's Positech variable leverage caliper. Patented but somehow never made it to market.

Here's a write up of it:
Cozy Beehive: Conversations With David Gordon Wilson : Part IV

Yes. I think the engineer weighed like 90 pounds soaking wet. Everything I had that was Syncros BITD couldn't take the beatdown on my MTB's.
I still have a NOS seatpost in my stash.

They tried to be different, but went in the wrong direction every time. Remember the compressed split cylinder for securing the stem to the steerer? Shockingly bad design.

Pedals from the 1970s
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...d0d5551915.jpg

Heard back from Ritchey, quill stems made by Nitto, they are not sure about 26.0 handlebars but definitely not in the US, interesting historical bits.

Perhaps someone could shed more light of Scott Sports and their handlebars- where made, etc.. They also 'grabbed' onto the aero bar patent and sold licensing rights of it, in the mid or late 1980s.

There was the Swiss owned Weinmann that produced rims in Olney, IL. I'm curious if any brake products were produced there as well. Went up in smoke... literally.

I've seen early Sun rims labeled as US made, still some floating around as late as 2000ish.

Proshift/Precision billet made derailleurs, you can buy an updated one from Toronto cycles I think. The White Industries derailleur used it's own crazy grip shifter thing with double cables, so maybe counts for US made shifter.

Came across some Grove Innovations road stems the other day, thought they only did MTB stuff. Very American, SAE/imperial hardware and threads on everything.

Wow, corn-based bicycle parts.

Hi-E? Probably nothing on your list.

Cane Creek is out of Asheville NC, but not sure what is made there.