about the rims. the WTB are a nice branded rim, nothing super special but very good value. we never did “cheap” superstar rims, so they filled the gap for something more value orientated

the isotope, arc, DHX, pave and element rims were our main seller. manufactured by kinlin who in my opinion make the best rims on the market. Ive been in the factory and they are a lovely family company, they actually make their own aluminum alloy inhouse in a huge casting furnace making 12m long round billets ready to extrude again inhouse. The key to why they are nice is they heat treat this quality of rims AFTER they have hooped them into wheels, so they are super straight and have no stress in the material. I dont know anyone else who does this and they build so easy because of it. They anodise after hooping as well which means you dont get the cracking on the surface you get with cheaper anodised while flat bar rims. never at the cutting edge of fashion but thats because they were so busy making bombproof quality rims.

the alpine and trail rims were my own design made at one of the other really nice low volume factories (used by some hideously expensive brands). They are the next step on from kinlin but were so crazy expensive to make at nearly 3 times the cost i doubt we ever made any money on the rims themselves!

i always chuckle to myself when i read the superlatives given by some of the “order it in a container selected from a catalogue” products selling for twice what we would sell them for. im always amazed how many of these people have never been to taiwan let alone been in the factory or had any involvement in the manufacturing/design of their “custom and ultra special” parts. I play a silly game at trade shows where i try and work out who has made something for a brand by looking for little clues like how they laser the serial number on….

Neil (superstarcomponents)

Yes as said above we have sold off the wheelbuilding side of the business due to supply chain problems making it impossible to get everything we needed to make wheels, someone offered us a good price on the machine line and that was it.

So we are clearing out the stock we have at below raw materials cost.

im sure we are going to get people saying they were originally overpriced etc, well off you pop to buy your generic asia stuff for more than we were selling our UK made wheels originally….. your loss not mine.

Yes, been a bit busy making medical stuff for a few years. Had two babies, moved house, life busy and complicated so no time to do all that and launch new stuff when you couldnt get raw materials for sensible money.

Just sold a few hundred wheelsets in a day or so. all the preorder stuff is waiting on freehubs being assembled and spacers landing to be able to ship them out. everything is built and boxed, once its gone its gone.

note we have thousands of spare parts which will last for years, and we can get more made if needs be. so no they arent disposable junk. Im sure its going to make alot of people happy to get a true bargain for once.

Neil (superstarcomponents)

WOWSER, i didn’t realise how much stuff like pedals had gone up in price in the last few years. Im just pricing up the business case for about 6 pedal designs i have had on my computer for the last 3-7 years…

Question for the big feet people, is length or width more important? whats your sweet spot for dimensions on your dream pedal?

Neil (superstarcomponents)

I thought i would jump in here to explain the several questions raised about Superstar in the discussion above
The PI pedals we manufactured to their design for European sales, but the UK arm (supplied Europe) of the business closed its doors.

As a subcontract manufacturer we dont really have anything to do with them other than manufacturing parts for them. I think the USA guy is still going but not heard from them for a long time.

Yes as Chapaking has said we have been hellishly busy. We manufacture alot of parts outside of the cycle industry and for other bike brands, these normally get higher priority than making more bits for Superstar. We have been making medical parts for 4-5 years now and when Covid hit its been non-stop since then with insane volumes of 5 axis parts for DNA analysis machines. We have been running machines literally 24/7 to keep up and the maintinence time to keep ontop of making sure they run accurately and reliably round the clock ate all our man hours. I spent the first 12 weeks of Covid working 6 days a week staying in a caravan at the factory to make sure the Covid testing machine parts were made ASAP…

Next issue is materials have been a nightmare. We had quotes of 2 years payment up front for several lines which made making some products physically impossible. This is what caused the wheelbuilding side of the business to be sold, as I got an offer i couldnt refuse at the right time and it allowed us to focus on other projects. We are still manufacturing hubs and spare parts, but if you cant get spokes in 2 years you cant build wheels which made the huge capital investment impossible to justify.

Things are settling down finally and lots of the overdue jobs are getting back. The good news is…. Nanos are finally back in production and i expect to ship the backlog in the next 2-3 weeks depending on how fast the anodisers process the next batch. We have several other ranges of pedals in the works im hoping to get on sale by christmas if all goes well.

any questions let me know, Neil (Superstar Components)

They are just M4 so fill your boots with anything you like

Pins are custom made for us in millions per batch but that’s a tiny order for that sort of thing. They are ED coated so they don’t rust and are grippier than normal full thread. Heads are slightly smaller too.

To be honest once you have counted them out, bagged/labelled, picked, packed, posted, paid card fees, turned the lights on, paid the staff and paid your vat on them we make naff all on them at £20 anyway.

Neil SuperstarComponents

Oh I fell off my chair with the optimism in this thread. I’ve given up shipping big deliveries to Europe. all the OE clients we make stuff for in Europe I insist they collect so the problem happens in their country otherwise it gets lost half the time even with the correct paperwork and not trying to dodge taxes.

What an utter shit show Boris. 98% drop in consumer sales from Europe for me, I’m glad I’m busy doing other work or I’d be really mad…

Neil SuperstarComponents

Soft plastic and smaller indent for the chain roller. This makes them more tolerant to worn out mating parts but worse for alot of other reasons

If I made the jockeys completely round it would alway match the chain wear and you wouldn’t have a problem🤦‍♂️

Neil SuperstarComponents

Drivetrain worn to 0.75% three chains olds your problem… who would have thought?🤣

If you want to know my Personal opinion. The narrow wide bit is pointless marketing but it’s what most people want. They actually do nothing and cause no problems. Sure tinfoil hat time you can point at it but it’s not your actual problem.

If they skip or do anything weird your setup is worn to a different length than new. So until you grind the new superstar jockeys into your knackered setup that’s your problem…

Sold over ten thousand sets. Minimal problems other than that which isn’t anything to do with the jockeys

Neil SuperstarComponents

Ashima had basically these on sale at Taipei bike show 4 years ago. I almost bought a load to sell under SuperstarComponents. Everything has been done before, don’t believe the hype.

Neil SuperstarComponents

Yes they are tubeless ready.

If they leak from anywhere it’s a problem with the taping. Arguing till your blue in the face, then it always ends up back here. Any leak from anywhere will end up in the void and come out near the valve

Strip, clean and retape

Neil SuperstarComponents

18 month leadtimes on spokes and nipples now as they can’t keep up with demand.

We have had a long line of people asking for thousands of wheelsets which they want yesterday but unfortunately we can’t magic the rims and spokes they want out of fresh air to build them. So it looks like they won’t be selling the bikes they planned too as they are struggling to find a full set of parts.

It’s going to be an “interesting” year next year for a lot of brands/shops with huge order books they can’t fulfil. It’s probably going to be a bit quiet on exciting new products for us at SuperstarComponents but in the background we are booked up on capacity for next year on medical parts so we will see what happens when supply gets more back to normal in 2022-23

Neil SuperstarComponents

🤦‍♂️

Neil. SuperstarComponents

Just so you know several bike frame factories in Asia have gone pop as they can’t get raw materials to actually make things and pay the bills. No lack of orders

18 months for forgings, 64 weeks for spoke nipples, over a year leadtimes for some types of metal. I’ve heard shimano ebike parts are 2024 delivery now…

Ive knocked several product lines on the head like thru axles as we can’t buy 2000kg of 7075 Swiss lathe bar till summer next year. Pedal axles have been a mare too. Lucky we have literally tons of metal instock as I forward order over a year in advance but not everything.

Shipping containers gone from £2500 to £15000 a box. That’s £40 on every imported wheelset…

We have bearly started to see the start of the shortages kick in worldwide. Don’t be surprised by 50% price increases next year

Neil SuperstarComponents

If you think it’s bad now just wait…

I’ve ordered some more high tolerance 20mm 7075 bar for making thru axles and hub axles. 2000kg Nothing available off the shelf in U.K./Europe and spring next year delivery maybe summer. Same story on most things, even basics like 6000 series bars on backorder. Oh and Everything has nearly doubled in price, getting the same messages from my manufacturer friends worldwide.

So I’ve got a list of bike manufacturing clients who want thousands of parts made and I’m turning down most of the work as volume materials aren’t available unless you want to pay insane prices. I’m sure some will come back in a few weeks and accept that costs have gone up 50% everywhere.

We have plenty of materials forward planned in for SuperstarComponents but I can’t plan for clients. It does mean holes in ranges, but there’s nothing we can do. Ive just cancelled the order of a robot loaded CNC because what’s the point if it’s going to sit for 9-12 months waiting for metal to arrive.

I’m expecting across the board 25-50% price rises on top of what has already happened. And availability to nosedive further. It happened 10 years ago and it’s happening again

Neil SuperstarComponents

Spooky. We offer 45 days NO QUESTIONS ASKED. We will offer advice if it’s obviously nothing to do with the pads but that doesn’t affect our offer. We can offer that as we get so few actual issues or returns.

As for them falling off I can’t comment on things I haven’t seen. All the pads fly through CEN testing including delamination and salt spray testing. There’s normally a reason for it other than pads. Ironically they are also the same pads some of the worlds largest OEMs sell (and people say are clearly much better than our pads)

Over a decade ago there was a bad batch which we pulled and contacted all customers to return for a refund. It was about 100 packs in the wild. Yet 12 years later people sagely say all our pads are still faulty. May I note I know of at least 3 brands who sold the same bad pads and didn’t bother recalling them, just sold them through. Strange that is never mentioned.

It’s entertained me for years to see how deep a lot of people suck up marketing, yet I know who makes for who and what is the exact same product. Yet part A is junk and part B is amazing, yet I know they are exactly the same. Then the same guff gets spouted out again and again.

Grumbles over, stuff to do

Neil SuperstarComponents

Hello, I’m just going to step in before false rumours or presumptions start getting repeated.

We have sold hundreds of thousands of packs of pads over the last 15 years. Obviously if they were junk we would be out of business years ago. We literally get a handful of problems reported every year and every one which was returned was either worn like a cheese wedge, screwdrivered off the backing or eaten by a worn out rotor. I’m sure every brand gets the same.

Why do Kevlar eat rotors? It’s because they work too well… they just don’t fade so keep braking till your rotor gets so hot it goes soft and anneals. Personally I prefer that to brake fade and not being able to stop. Want less wear try organic but don’t drag your brakes all the way down an alpine decent.

Why did we stop stocking pads? Loads of brands popped up promising the world and selling them stupid cheap. Became pointless to try and compete with them, so we invested the cash flow into CNC machines instead.

Now 90% of those brands have gone pop, we decided to get some back in and continue selling quality pads for a sensible price. Who else offers 45 day no questions money back trial on pads?

Lead times are crazy so I suspect we will sell out of key ones in a month or so at the current rate and no more incoming till next year.

Neil SuperstarComponents

Yes we sell them in the spares section like every part for the hubs we make in-house

Neil SuperstarComponents

Its the cassette….

OK, the XD standard originally had all the same splines but alot of people who cold formed their freehubs just used the blanks from shimano HG, machined to the XD shape. Then several people made aftermarket cassettes with HG style fittings for XD which was technically wrong. but now it looks like everyone is moving to HG type to make it all not a problem no matter if you use a badly copied cassette or a correctly made one.

We are changing over to HG splines for future runs of XD as we are moving to cold forming, in the meantime you can just file a spline off to make the ZTTO cassette work.

As for why you would need a timing spline on a 1 piece XD cassette… that tells you the cassette maker got it wrong and it should be syymmetrical.

did someone say standard??? surely not!

Neil, Superstar Components.

Sounds like you haven’t used a parallel bearing press and gave side loaded the bearings. You can’t just tap them in with a socket

First press in bearings to a totally clean and greased bore and fully press home. Then using a 2mm support and parallel press (which sits on inner and outer race) press the next in.

Any side load from bad bearing insertion will make it feel terrible. The spacer shouldn’t be loose either

Neil SuperstarComponents

Nedraiper. After years of everyone copying and jumping on the bandwagon of brake pads I decided to bow out the market. Why? Just became overcrowded and based around who got the biggest crew of paid influencers to bang on about their brand. It became a bloodbath of discounting and I was more interested in making U.K. stuff.

Now that’s all gone we are relaunching with a small restock in early summer. We get asked about 40 times a day so I’ve relented

Neil SuperstarComponents

Vondally sorry I never meant that you were even contemplating a troll war, just a jest at the trolls here. Your part has almost certainly been shipped by now, I hope you like it.

While there’s a lot of sensitive snowflakes on here who are offended by everything I say and are straight in to call their mates to add reply’s to back them up. I find that 99% of people (our actual customers) like honesty like this rather than corporate schmoozy customer service reply’s with no action.

Make nice parts in the U.K. , sell them for half the price of everyone else, don’t waste money paying people/media to do good reviews, sort the tiny number of problems, lots of return customers. That’s what we do.

Neil SuperstarComponents

Chapaking yes. Just the one…

Sorry I was just so shook by SuperstarComponents being described as EXPENSIVE and crap. Blew my mind. My sarcasm at the love of marketing bull in the bike industry obviously didn’t come through clear enough.

As you can see plenty of happy customers. We wouldn’t be still in business a decade and a half on if they weren’t.

Suns out. Go ride your bikes and be happy. Vondally your headset will no doubt be going out today. Any probs just email rather than start a decade long troll war please. I’m sure you will love it

Neil SuperstarComponents

Hi TJ. I know you can’t help but troll about products you haven’t actually bought.

If you was a customer you probably would have a different opinion.

Happy trolling

Neil SuperstarComponents

I see you didn’t really get that…

Yup, lots of positive comments from actual users

Negative comments as well from people who clearly haven’t used.

Thing which grates is people saying should I “risk” SuperstarComponents parts. No need to think like that as we stand by our product and make quality parts in the U.K.

Funny thing the internet

Neil SuperstarComponents

Cheers for all the comments based on “perceptions” from people who value marketing and branding over a quality U.K. made product which I presume they haven’t even used or seen from their description.

Makes me laugh when people slate our own brand products when we also make the other brand they recommend. We are making four figure numbers of headsets a month now in-house and I can’t remember a problem other than people fitting bearings upside down occasionally.

Anyway back to more important things than listening to people who aren’t our customer as we aren’t expensive enough for their ego.

I’ll focus on keeping up with demand on our U.K. made products and making all the medical stuff we do as well….

Neil SuperstarComponents

Happens occasionally to most hubs. Unless it’s really ancient we would swap it out no questions asked when returned to us. But obviously I’m sure someone will be along to slag us off for not supporting our customers, when we actually do look after genuine warranty cases every time.

Actually our biggest warranty issue in 2020…. another brand of rims and not a superstar product.

Neil SuperstarComponents

Still trolling and sniping a decade on I see. Munrobiker.

Dangerously close to libel there

Neil SuperstarComponents

It looks to me like they needed to raise match funding to get grant money out of the government. Nowt wrong with that, there’s plenty of businesses running on money given to them when they aren’t viable. It’s not a loan so spend it till it runs out and as for more. Aim is probably get given more money or sell out.

What I don’t get is how it’s ever going to be profitable knowing the bill of materials costs of doing a frame like this. Robot appeared to do it by not paying their 3D printing invoices according to they liquidation statement with a crazy number owed to I think HIETA.

First the print is expensive even if you own the printer. I know Renishaw are selling off older machines for cheaps but material cost per print is a lot. Then you have to do loads of post machining. Then buy all the other parts and assemble.

That said when you can buy a taiwan made sub 50 minimum order full sus frame for $250 which people lap up for £2000 in the shops, maybe it’s possible. It’s a money game, you just need more.

Maybe they will just buy some Asia frames and rebrand or sell kids bikes who knows. I don’t understand where this is going.

Neil SuperstarComponents

If you want half of a degree slacker then just fit larger tyres or pump them up a bit….

Neil SuperstarComponents

We only have ever made 2 degree. I don’t really want another 60 part numbers on the shelf when demand will be minimal for minimal differences, 99% of people will go 2 degrees

All made in-house in Lincoln, we sell literally thousands of them and they have proper custom rubber seals on them so last a decent time.

Neil SuperstarComponents

As a company expecting to lose 50% of retail turnover when we crash out of Europe in a chaotic shambles, here’s one of the basic reasons.

Shipping Dpd to Germany £7 for anything upto 30kg. Ten metres across the boarder in Switzerland £50. The difference all the customs fees and docs, then chuck in all the fees for the customer end too and strangely customers don’t bother ordering. Also any customer service in future costs that on every shipment too so especially on big stuff It entirely nukes the margin.

As of leaving properly that’s the whole of Europe.

Then Throw in we want our own rules for everything. Which means legally it’s double the ballache to comply for what to the Europeans is a poxy little slice of their market.

Hence why we are focusing on manufacturing currently.

Neil SuperstarComponents

Can you email pictures of the hub and freehub internals to cnc@superstarcomponents.com

I have a sad game where I see what factory makes each brands products. I suspect it’s KT hubs knowing richey, so loads of other people selling the same hub. Bet you can get the endcaps with little hassle from another brand.

Neil SuperstarComponents

We had that crazy sale on to clear the old hubs and rims. Now that they have gone to lots of people who got a set of wheels for less than manufacturing cost… and now they have gone it’s ended

Are we going to have a big sale next week? Unlikely as we can’t make stuff fast enough to keep up with demand.

No you can’t use two vouchers so email customer service.

Seriously thinking of doubling our prices to make them the same as everyone else so we don’t get all the stupid and completely made up conspiracy theories

Neil SuperstarComponents

also check they have fitted the spacer behind the cassette if its a mtb one.

its a 12 speed freehub again same as hope does, so you can fit any shimano HG cassette

Hello its Neil from superstar.

really hard to diagnose remotely as it could be loads of things.

first thing i would check is the plastic seal is the right way around (injection molding ejector pin marks outwards) and fully snapped in. if its been messed around with in bike build it is possible its been pulled out slightly. exactly the same as hope hubs

second thing is im of the opinion that seals should actually work and therefore have to touch the mating face. most taiwan hubs i saw has seals just for looks as there was sometimes a 1mm gap to “reduce friction”. we fit them dry as grease just attacts grit and wears things out, after a ride they polish up and work perfect. some people prefer to wipe a bit of grease on them by pulling off the endcaps to make them a bit slidyier.

as for the creak it could be literally anything.

PM me if you have questions as i only look at STW once in a while as im so busy making medical parts currently.

Neil (superstarcomponents)

Hello to the people who said they had a problem but never contacted us… try contacting us and we will help!

Different between the two models is V6 has hugely expensive SKF bearings and double the engagement speed. Everything else the same.

Biggest problem we have currently is being able to make them fast enough… we keep emails to the point as we are flat out answering everyone, I don’t really understand why this is a problem? I don’t understand how paragraphs of apologies, hand holding and flowery language unrelated to sorting your problem really helps sort your problem, but hey.

Anyway I’m not really involved in the bike side of things, as I’m still flat out making medical parts and i suspect it will be getting busier in the next few months.

Neil SuperstarComponents

https://www.chainreactioncycles.com/mobile/nukeproof-horizon-v2-pawls-springs/rp-prod195648

Suspect this might be the part. But knowing the Taiwanese they may have randomly changed it to make buying spares impossible. It’s why I gave up on imported parts and make everything ourselves now

Neil SuperstarComponents

Looks like nukeproof are now selling that exact same hub….

We only have a handful of freehubs left and can’t get any more. Several brands sold that hub but most people never bother stocking any spares at all

Neil SuperstarComponents

Angle headsets will wear bearings slightly as unless you are bang on the ideal headtube length you will be twisting the bearings slightly as the cup seats won’t be perfectly aligned. Only like a fraction of a degree and bearings are cheap so not really a problem. Probably a once a year job

Currently on a big run of 1500 angle cups to keep up with bonkers demand at the moment. Lots of other stuff on the 5axis so it will plod through them over 4-5 weeks

Contemplating doing offset bushes, just need to justify a £3500 tool unit for the Swiss lathe to make them for a price to embarrass the rest of the market….

Neil SuperstarComponents

One of the main issues is the bike industry is heavy on airfreighting goods from the other side of the planet just in time. Well airfreight has gone through the roof on cost so distributors just aren’t getting orders in as there’s no margin.

Sorry to break it to you but biking isn’t the green hobby people make out….

Second reason is everyone thought huge recession so cancel everything. So now there’s a six month lead time on ordering means lack of stock is here to stay.

So glad we make pretty much everything in-house. We have sold out of lots of things even though we are flat out manufacturing. But our parts are getting bumped as we do subcontract work for other people.

Neil SuperstarComponents