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USA made components?

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Old 10-30-19 | 05:46 PM
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USA made components?

The USA has had some great frame builders, and had a great tube-set maker in True temper, but are there any USA made road bike components? Like can you outfit your Chicago Paramount with US components?

maybe some BMX and MTB parts.. but road? can it even be done?

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Old 10-30-19 | 05:54 PM
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There are or were a few cantilever brakes but some, like Pauls, were real spendy. I think Pauls was the only rear derailleur made in the US but I think it still needed shipmano shifters.

There were various cranks, headsets and hubs but by the time you bought all that you could have bought a nice VGC C-record group.
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Old 10-30-19 | 05:54 PM
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Old 10-30-19 | 05:57 PM
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Jim Blackburn (racks & cages)
Phil Wood (Phil hubs)
Matrix (in house Trek rims)
Sun rims (early)
American Classic (hubs & seat posts)

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all I can recall at the moment aside from makers of panniers & such.

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Old 10-30-19 | 05:59 PM
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Avocet did for a while.
Excel
Hi-E
Sun
Not strictly C&V, but White Industries still do

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Old 10-30-19 | 06:13 PM
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Originally Posted by P!N20
Avocet did for a while.
Excel
Hi-E
Sun
Not strictly C&V, but White Industries still do
I don't think Avocet made anything here, did they? I know they outsourced shoes, cranks, seatposts and some saddles?
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Old 10-30-19 | 06:17 PM
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Originally Posted by jdawginsc
I don't think Avocet made anything here, did they? I know they outsourced shoes, cranks, seatposts and some saddles?

Dunno, just going off Velobase:

In its early days Avocet was driven by the dream of producing "Made in the USA" bicycle components. They developed a line of super-quality hubsets, headsets and bottom brackets. They also built a large saddle factory. Unfortunately, foreign competition made these ventures uneconomic and the saddle factory moved offshore. Only Avocet cyclometers were now made in the USA.
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Old 10-30-19 | 06:19 PM
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Bikes: centurion cinelli equipe, look hinault 753, Zunow z-1, 83 stumpy sport

Yeah I had some Avocet cranks but they were Ofmega (and awesome so thanks.. but). I do swear by my Avocet saddles- their touring series is the best. but not even sure they were really USA.

Like has anyone in the US ever even engineered and marketed a FD? I have no idea.. thus the ask.
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Old 10-30-19 | 06:30 PM
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As far as in production currently:

Brakes - Paul makes centerpull, V, canti, and disc brakes
Stems - Paul, Thomson, Moots, Industry 9, Enve (threadless only)
Seatposts - Paul, Thomson, Moots, Enve
Seat collars - Paul, Thomson, Phil
Headsets: White Industries, Phil, Chris King, Cane Creek
Hubs: Paul (SS only), White Industries, Chris King, Industry 9, Profile Racing
Rims: Velocity, White Industries, Enve
Saddles: Selle Anatomica
Handlebars: Enve and Thomson do drop bars
Cranks: Paul, Phil, White Industries, Profile Racing


Tires, pedals, quill stems, chains, derailleurs, and drop bar levers are missing

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Old 10-30-19 | 06:31 PM
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Originally Posted by jetboy
Like has anyone in the US ever even engineered and marketed a FD? I have no idea.. thus the ask.
Paul had a few years of front and rear derailleurs CNCd in California (Powerglide). During the early 90s there were probably a couple other boutique CNC machinists with derailleurs.
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Old 10-30-19 | 06:52 PM
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Forgot the original Weyless
Seat post, hubs and skewers, pedals.
Pino- bottom bracket, skewers, seatpost, stems.

Paul Components for brakes & levers, aside from the Phil disc.
Paul for derailleurs.

Going to be short of a full ensemble. Well, Schwinn did make stem shifters... Wald bars and stems.
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Old 10-30-19 | 07:26 PM
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Gotta throw in a mention for my buddy.

https://wickwerks.com/

I've got his rings on a couple of my bikes. They really do work amazingly well. The upshift is instantaneous!

And some girl named Katie Compton sure seems to love his rings too.



The owner Chris is a straight up awesome dude and has had a hand in sorting out several of my bikes for me.
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Old 10-30-19 | 07:40 PM
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a Weyless ad from 1975.....



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Old 10-30-19 | 07:41 PM
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Got a set of these on an '82 Trek 412.

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Old 10-30-19 | 07:49 PM
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no mention of Bullseye, run by Roger Durham?

Bullseye offered the first set of sealed bearing derailleur pulleys. I was a big fan...




they also sold pedals and cranks. Admittedly, the primary market was BMX, but the stuff did work nicely for touring...




....and hubs.....




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Old 10-30-19 | 09:55 PM
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Bikes: Indeed!

HED wheels and rims.
Salsa used to make quick releases, seat collars, bar-ends, and stems in the U.S.
Besides the hubs already mentioned, Phil makes bottom brackets and used to make pedals.
This is going a little far afield but Paragon Machine Works makes dropouts and various braze-on bits. Art Stump made the AD Stump dropouts.
I believe Wilderness Trail Bikes made a unicrown fork crown, also titanium handlebars, stems, "grease-guard" hubs and Charlie Cunningham's toggle-cam and roller-cam brakes.
OK, not USA, but North America and home to many of our esteemed members; Race Face made their cranks and other components in Canada.
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Old 10-30-19 | 10:50 PM
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Originally Posted by steelbikeguy
no mention of Bullseye, run by Roger Durham?
Bullseye never gets enough credit. They (by they I mean Roger Durham) invented the modern 2 piece hollow splined crank/BB that has been adopted by everyone. If there were a modern equivalent to the Bullseye crank, I'd buy it for sure. Hollow steel makes more sense than hollow aluminum.

Meanwhile, my bike has a Chris King headset, Phil Wood BB, Velocity rims and White Industries hubs. I was slightly intrigued by the innovative White Industries crank, but did Sugino instead.

There were 4 or 5 companies making derailleurs in the USA during the 90s, but no one is doing it now, unless you consider SRAM to be American, which they are technically, though the derailleurs might be considered the descendents of Huret via Sachs/Huret.
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Old 10-31-19 | 02:40 AM
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Spinergy wheels. PBO spokes are awesome.
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Old 10-31-19 | 05:59 AM
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Old 10-31-19 | 06:15 AM
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Depending on your cut-off point a lot of the 1990s CNC components could be considered C&V.

Besides Paul's rear derailleurs, there were rear derailleurs from Joe's, Precision Billet and Linear Motion.

Lot's of CNC cranksets from the likes of Adventure Components, Coda/Magic Motorcycle, Cook Bros., Grafton, Grove, Hershey, Kooka, Profile Racing, Race Face (Canada), Sampson, Sims, Syncros (Canada), T-Gear, TNT, Topline.

Brake's from the like of Avid and IRD, in additon some of the previously mentioned companies.

WTB offered a wide range od ATB components, some manufactured in the USA and some offshore.

I was at Paul Brodie's shop (Canada) were he showed me the protoype for his integral bar-stem.

While they're not components, technically speaking, let's not forget Easton tubing.
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Old 10-31-19 | 07:08 AM
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[MENTION=424205]Salamandrine[/MENTION] Bullseye is still being run by an associate of Roger, but obviously Roger is dead. From what I can tell the majority of their parts are still made in the US, by various machinists and welders under contract, mostly in Arizona. Although I've heard a few parts are made in Taiwan. You can still get cranks, but I think single ring only.

What you can still get is double or triple ring chromoly cranks from Profile Racing, made in Florida. They still make everything in-house. They have a variety of spiders available for different BCDs, chainrings, internal or external bottom brackets, steel or titanium spindles. I have a Profile crankset on my drop bar mountain bike. With the ti spindle the whole setup weighs about the same as a new Ultegra crankset!

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Old 10-31-19 | 07:33 AM
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Originally Posted by jdawginsc
I don't think Avocet made anything here, did they? I know they outsourced shoes, cranks, seatposts and some saddles?
I think their bike computers were USA made. Hubs, cranks, and pedals were made by Ofmega in Italy. Saddles by Selle Italia in Italy. Tires by National in Japan. Not sure where the shoes were made.
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Old 10-31-19 | 07:45 AM
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While not really what the OP inquired about, some USA frame builders are making components, so might technically qualify for discussion.
If nothing else, it's an excuse to show a little bike porn...

Specifically, I'd like to share some pics of a tubular steel crankset built by Brian Chapman. These are on his personal tandem. Not sure if he would build them for a customer, and if he would, I would expect the price to be appropriately high.

With those disclaimers out of the way, here is the axle end of the drive side stoker crank:




and the pedal end of the arm. The little "wrap-over" feature at each end is a slick detail.



and the captain's non-drive side crank arm...



Steve in Peoria
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Old 10-31-19 | 08:37 AM
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There is a pair of White Industries pedals up on ebay.
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Old 10-31-19 | 10:39 AM
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This Mavic crankset is made in the USA
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