Colorado Kid

Does anyone have shots they can share with everyone of the Cannondale factory back in the day? It would be nice to see the place where all these older bikes were made.

georges1

This is what happens when a company like Dorel outsourced a production to Taiwan resulting in unemployment and lower quality in my own opinion. I will never buy a modern Cannondale, I would rather buy a vintage one roadbike model the last year of the made in USA Cannondale. In 2004, Dorel acquired Pacific Cycle, a company that designs, markets, and distributes branded bicycles and other recreational products. In February 2008, Dorel purchased the Cannondale Bicycle Corporation and SUGOI Performance Apparel. In July 2009, Dorel announced its acquisition of Iron Horse Bicyles. In August 2013, Dorel announced its acquisition of Brazil-based Bicicletas Caloi S/A.
Dorel marketed its sports products under the brand names of Cannondale, Schwinn, GT Bicycles, Moongoose, Caloi, Ironhorse,Roadmadter, SUGOI (sold to Garneau June 2018), and Fabric. In October 2021, Dorel Sports was sold to Dutch Pon Holdings. Who is Pon Holdings? Pon Holdings BV is a Dutch conglomerate in the transport sector. It was founded in 1980 by Ben Pon, Jr., a former racing car driver and son of Ben Pon, Sr., who became the importer of Volkswagen in the Netherlands in 1947. As of 2021 it is still owned by the Pon family.
It is one of the five largest bicycle manufacturers in the world, and owns bicycle brands Caloi, Cannondale, Cervélo, Derby Cycle (owner of Focus), GT, Gazelle, Iron Horse, Kahlkoff, Mongoose, Santacruz, Veloretti and Schwinn, among others.

Lamont Cobb

I love the early Cannondales.

mstateglfr 

1- MUSA Cannondale bikes were how the brand got the nickname 'crack n fail'. Keep that in mind while waxing poetically about the better days.
2 - We own a Taiwan produced Synapse from 2015. It's perfectly fine. The fit and finish are great.
I ride with 3 people that have Cannondale road bikes from the last 7 years- they are all perfectly fine and are loved.
I own a Cannondale CAAD3 which is a MUSA frame and the frame is nothing magical compared to any random Aluminum frame with carbon fork from the 00s or 10s.
One guy had a Synapse from 2017 that clicked and gave him fits. That was a press fit bb issue and was no different from countless road frames from various brands.



MUSA Cannondale frames have no magic. They are not more reliable or better finished than Taiwan made Cannondale frames from the last decade. And again, MUSA Cannondale bikes gave the brand the nickname 'crack n fail'.

georges1

MUSA Cannondale have made the brand famous with the Volvo Cannondale Team as well as with the Saeco Team and Liquigas Team who allowed Cannondale to have a worldwide reputation Saeco Road Bike Racing History with Riders like Cippo and Commesso, Liquigas Racing History with riders like Peter Sagan, Magnus Bäckstedt and Maciej Bodnar, a list of Volvo-Cannondale’s current and past rosters reads like a “Who’s Who” of the sport. Beside Chausson, Sauser, Juarez and Gracia, riders such as Alison Sydor, Cadel Evans, Missy Giove, Myles Rockwell and Brian Lopes were all members of the team at one time or another. The team was also a multiple winner of the VeloNews International Mountain Bike Team of the Year award. The Cannondale golden age is often linked to the mid 1990's to the early 2000's unlike nowadays products Cannondale Fame. We have different likes and we have different ideas about bike manufacturing. The quality of the welds on older made in USA Cannondales were oustanding and the newer ones not as good as what was made in Bedford but again we think differently, I would rather have a USA made CAAD8 optimo than a Taiwan made CAAD12.

Erzulis Boat 

Here is a MUSA Cannondale. Flawless welds, and an incredible ride quality. Top 2 bikes (ride-wise) in my collection are the 2000's SOMEC and this Cannondale.

Note- These are wind turbine blades stockpiled to complete a wind farm above Lompoc, California. The blades are larger/longer than you would think! I did not count the number of flange bolts, but I could from this picture I suppose. Naw, I will just say that there are a lot!

Homebrew01

Unjustified, IMO. There were paint problems early on, and some tube warping during heat treating. I would have heard about any significant frame failures.

unterhausen

I have one of their Diacro tubing benders. Wish I had gone to the auction, it wasn't that far from here.

Trakhak

Cannondale warrantied their frames for life from the get-go. They'd have lost a lot of money if the frames were failing at any significant rate. Which, of course, they weren't, cutesy name-calling notwithstanding.

"Crack-n-fail," like "Cramp-n-go-slow" and "Shi*mano," tells you nothing about the products and everything about how boring it can be working in bike stores in the winter. (I suspect that the arguably belittling term "wrench," meaning "mechanic," was coined by a bored bike store guy one winter.)

I worked in a shop in the late '80s or early '90s with a couple of guys who were vehement in stating that aluminum frames were far more unreliable than steel bikes and that titanium frames were well-nigh invulnerable.

I said to one, you had a Lightspeed titanium bike, right? What happened to it? "The chain stay cracked near the dropout." I then said to the other, "Where's your Giant titanium bike?" "It cracked through a weld." One of those guys had owned a steel Serotta that failed, too.

Neither saw any problem with maintaining their opinions on the durability of different frame materials. As far as they were concerned, aluminum frames failed because they were aluminum; steel and titanium frames failed despite being steel and titanium. Human nature.

dedhed

But CDale does have a magic connection.

MOMBAT: Magic Motorcycle History

Chr0m0ly 

Somewhere around here is an article where 80's frames were put into the tarrantula cyclic tester. Cannondales tested significantly better than several well made steel frames of the day.

Trakhak

Article was from 1997. Cannondale and Principia aluminum frames and a Trek OCLV frame passed the tests; all the steel and titanium frames failed.

12 High-End Frames in the EFBe Fatigue Test

Bully4

Anybody remember that they actually dove into the motorcycle market? They tried their hands at dirt bikes. I know a few people that worked for them and loved it. They said you could actually ride some of the bikes on the company's test track. I think their main issue was attempting to do EFI before the ECM's were fast enough to work properly on a high-revving dirt bike engine.

cb400bill

I have owned an MUSA 2006 Cannondale Synapse since it was new. The welds on it are beautifully smooth and I have had no issues in 25,000 miles. I have friends that have modern Cannondales that were made in Asia, and while their welds aren't sanded smooth, the quality of the welds is just as good as the ones on my bike.

Headpost

So much that I didn't know. Also some factory footage.

mstateglfr 

The cantilevered road frames from the early 90s had more than paint problems and tube warping.
The cantilevered dropout was, in part, what helped make the nickname stick.

So MUSA frames had paint issues, warped tubes,and a dropout design that no longer exists for good reason.
Let's not get into their suspension designs over the last 30 years.

Chr0m0ly 

There we go, thank you. Always better to have data than anecdotes and rumors.

georges1

Interesting to hear and thanks for sharing. Do you know if they still offer the lifetime warranty since they outsourced the production ?

mstateglfr 

That article talks about a CAAD3. That model was after the cantilevered dropout design.

Funny enough, I own a CAAD3 frame and it's been my main road bike this year since Ive been too lazy to rebuild my actual main road bike.
I repainted the CAAD3, added a carbon fork, and slapped on 11sp Ultegra/105 components. Love the bike- it's a blast to ride.

My posts here aren't crapping on Cannondale. I really like my MUSA Cannondale frame. It just isn't inherently higher quality in finish or reliability simply due to having been made in the US.

Atlas Shrugged

I find amusing those who wax poetically about made in USA yet wouldn’t want their children or other loved ones working on a production line in a factory monotonously welding, painting or finishing frames 8 hours a day for a decade or more. If you feel better buying a vintage bike made by a laborer in France, England or Italy in the 80’s enjoy there is plenty to choose from, however don’t kid yourself these were bastions of quality workmanship compared to what is being made in Taiwan today.

georges1

Today all is about cuttings production costs and building more bikes at a cheaper labor cost. In the past in the 80's early 90's you could buy some nice frame Jean Marie Pilorget, Meral, Cycles Rebiai and other well known builders at a comparable price. I live in France and Cannondale got really popular in my country in 1996 with the Volvo Cannondale MTB team and with the appearance of the 1997 Saeco Road BikeRacing team, until then it was not as popular as brands such as Peugeot, Lapierre, Motobecane and Sunn who were the top four best selling brands. In the very late 1990's early 2000s, I started to see quite a number of Cannondales appearing whether they were road and MTB models. Vintage Cannondales are highly praised and sought after in my country.

Minion1

A few years ago Cannondale tried to redefine lifetime warranty as the frames having a finite lifespan, so the warranty on an alloy frame was 5 years and a carbon frame had a ten year lifespan, hence a ten year warranty. That was slapped down, really quickly, because they tried to retroactively apply it to customers who had bought their bikes before they tried this on (this was in the Dorel days) who had the expectation of an actual lifetime warranty on the frame they purchased at the time. I don't know what the current warranty looks like, but I do recall they had to backtrack from this position otherwise they would be on a hiding to nothing with the consumer commission.

Trakhak

Though it was clearly wrong for Dorel to try to retroactively weasel out on warranty coverage, I can see why they would want to. Their management must have thought that offering a lifetime warranty on any consumer product, much less a bicycle frame that might be used and abused for hundreds of thousands of miles, is insane.

If Schwinn had never introduced the idea of a lifetime warranty to (I think) promote sales of their electroforged frames, a lot of bike manufacturers the world over would have been much happier in the decades to come.

RB1-luvr

having been given C'dale frames to race every year in the mid to late eighties to race, I have a mixed opinion of them. They were great crit axes. The quality was not great. The powder coating would bubble and then flake off in huge patches. The rear derailleur hangers creaked and required constant greasing. The ride was really harsh, especially the 3.0 with its huge downtube and super short chain stays. Back then the peloton referred to them as "Crack'n'fails". I'm not sure where that came from. None of the five I had cracked. Regardless, I've never wanted a C'dale since.

El Chaba

I stopped by to see the factory on my way up to the Altoona area to train for a couple of days in the mountains. It was in Bedford, Pa. It was a pretty generic looking warehouse style building in a small industrial park type area, but did have the name “Cannondale” on the building in the familiar script.
The Saeco sponsorship was very good for Cannondale. Without the team telling them that their bikes rode like crap at the beginning of the sponsorship, there is no way that the product would have improved as it did. You could observe the input from the team over the years…very stiff frames when Cipollini was the only star and a bit more forgiving during the period when they had winning GC riders like Gotti, Salvoldelli, and Simoni. They had a section on their website where they sold team bikes. I bought a new CAAD 5 that had been built for a team rider whose name I can’t recall at the moment. It had never been built as the team was getting CAAD 6 s starting halfway through the season, and apparently the frame I bought was no longer needed and had been intended as a mid season replacement. In any event, I bought on a bit of a whim as it was perfect for my needs with a top tube 1 cm longer than the stock number for my frame size and a low bottom bracket height as well. Interestingly, it is also not particularly light and about a half pound heavier than a standard frame (clearly heavier tubing) and the fork had an aluminum steerer. Even the team frames had the “warning” sticker at the bottom of the downtube telling the owner to always wear a helmet, etc. Before leaving the factory, they had affixed a sticker of a cartoon caricature Saeco rider over top of the warning label. The bike also came with the CODA/Magic Motorcycle crankset and a Campagnolo integrated headset (I think the bikes for general sale had FSA). Nice bike, beautifully welded, machined and aligned…..but very stiff and not the bike that you would pick for a century.