bostontrevor

Ok. So what's the deal with Sub 11.0 vs. Surly? I know that all the Sub 11.0 stuff (dropouts, Fixxer, whatever else) is now branded Surly, but what's the story behind all that? Who was Sub 11.0? How'd they become Surly? Were they always a QBP brand or was the Sub 11.0 -> Surly transition part of being bought by QBP?

Someone must know the lore.

Thylacine

I have no idea. When I started with the whole frame thing, all the hooded horizontals were labeled 'Sub 11', then they got phased out by the wholesaler and then 'Shazam' - They're available from QBP with 'Surly' stapmed on them.

Talk about negative connotations. It's like running pressed steel wheels on a Ferrari.

Still, a dropout is a dropout, and if the fooker can hold a wheel in place, who am I to argue?

riderx

Sub 11 and Surly have always been QBP ventures.

KrisPistofferson

Are they really "Norwegian batchelor farmers"?

Miracle Whip

Could you elaborate? Or is this product bashing for the sake of bashing someones elses product?

icithecat

Miracle Whip. You might want to do a bit of research before slamming a poster. Unless of course you like wearing Egg, vi****r, mystery ingrediants, etc.

BostonFixed

What i'd like to know is what kind of name sub 11.0 is??

jim-bob

I like my sub-11 dropouts.

Miracle Whip

Easy FanBoy. I'm well aware that Thylacine is the creator of some very nice custom frames. I just want him to clarify his statement.

bostontrevor

Hehe... I suspect the statement was along the lines that when they weren't a QBP brand or at least not so obviously so--one poster claims that they always were but I've found references to them being carried by distributors other than QBP in the Sub 11.0 days and not just Thylacine--it had the feel of a small boutique operation that specialized in the then niche market of singlespeed components.

When they come out as a QBP house brand...Well, QBP has a reputation for quality products without any particular flair or soul. Nothing wrong with that, but not impression your seeking with a custom frame, for example.

redfooj

so a surly is akin to a ferrari now?

bostontrevor

No, exactly the opposite.

Now this, on the other hand.... https://www.cccycles.com/1x1.html or perhaps https://www.thylacinecycles.com/xc_xcsl.htm

Thylacine

Surly is a mass produced invention of a large company, and are good bikes for the money. That's it. I'm not sure if it's my brand of consumerism or what, but I just can't get excited by corporate mass produced bikes. It's like being excited by Subway.

MZC

Hi Guys,

I was just looking online for some photos of the original Sub 11.0 dropouts for some long-overdue portfolio work. I see this posting is from a long time back, so here's a long-overdue story, if anyone is interested anymore...

Back at the end of the 1980's/beginning of the 1990's, Joe Breeze began selling his line of asian-built Breezers and his "Breeze-in" dropouts. The dropouts were an investment cast version of a compact and strong dropout design out of the 1920s (I'm pretty sure I've seen a bike with these in the vast collection of the German transportation museum in Munich-- I'll try to find this and post a picture, the next time I'm there) and made building rear triangles much-easier. These dropouts also noticeably enhanced the rigidity of rear triangles (I tested this out and was really surprised). Quality Bicycle Products, of Bloomington Minnesota was one of the wholesalers for these dropouts.

One day, Todd Cravens, one of the product managers at QBP, and an avid velodrome racing fan, approached me with the idea of designing and manufacturing an investment cast track dropout, with a similar type of connection to the stays. I designed these in AutoCAD and produced some first prototypes for them. QBP had these investment cast by one of their vendors in Asia and started selling them with the name of "Sub 11.0," since all great track riders can do the flying 200 under 11 seconds-- This is the standard of a great track rider.

As a bit of background, the single-speed scene hadn't even started then, so these types of dropouts were almost-exclusively the provence of the track scene.

They were an instant hit.

Not too long after that, QBP hired a fulltime industrial designer named Wakeman Massey (I think I got his name right) and started their Surly brand. They built the brand around stripped-down, rock-bottom-priced, all-action, well-designed cyclecross bikes. This quickly spread into a product line that included singles and whatever else is in the line today. I'm assuming that the single market quickly became much-larger than the market for track bikes, so they changed the Sub 11.0 dropouts to the Surly brand name.

Last Fall, at the Friedrichshafen bicycle show, I saw a version of these with fender or rack eyelets on a Surly, so they must still be in production. If you have any photos of the Sub 11.0 versions, I'd really appreciate being able to put them in my portfolio-- as with most things that I designed, I was late delivering and rushed the prototypes out of my shop without taking any decent photos of them.

Hope you guys have enjoyed using the parts. I think I still have the original engineering drawings for these in my file cabinet downstairs.

Best Regards,
MZ Munich, Germany

Cynikal 

Now this is why you pull a thread out of the grave. Awesome!

cavernmech

Sub 11 relates to flying 200m lap time....anything under 11 seconds is fast.

Thylacine

Nice story. Weird they would prototype them in Germany, but at least you'd know they'd be done right!

Do you still do prototype CNC work?

jim-bob

Here's a shot of the sub 11.0 dropouts in their native environment - let me know if you want higher res or anything..

bikesandtools

Here are a few photos of an unused set. Let me know if you want anything different. If you really want me to, I can bead blast them clean.

Andrew

Thylacine

Nah, but you can send them to me instead!

MZC

Hello, I didn't live in Germany, when I designed these, I lived in the US, in Wayzata, Minnesota, so there was a very-local and long-standing connexion between me and QBP.

Thanks for posting the links to photos. I found the original drawings for these and will soon post them on my Mark Zeh Cycles Facebook group page.

Best Regards,
Mark

MZC

Hi Andrew, Do you still have those and will you sell them to me? I'd also happily exchange them for a new set of "Surly" dropouts, that are lying in my toolbox. Thanks, Mark

MZC

Hi, The prototypes were made by me, on a non-CNC mill, in Wayzata, Minnesota. I used a rotating table and a set of real, old-fashioned engineering drawings to produce the first pair. I personally did the setups, put the parts on the rotating table and turned the cranks. The prototypes were sent to Taiwan, as samples, with the part drawings, for the patternmaker, who produced the investment-cast versions.

I do not any longer have machining capability. However, I am still completely involved as a designer.

Best Regards,
Mark

silver_ghost

I have a semi-related question: Why the "hood" type flange around the dropout? I understand this is done on BMX race bikes to prevent a person from being gouged by a protruding axle in a pile up. Do the Sub 11.0/Surly dropouts follow the same logic since these dropouts were intended for use on track bikes?

ps. Five years and 24 posts and no one has posted the link to Sheldon explaining why we're all wrong for calling them "dropouts". Wow!

spikeB