About Pfeiffer:

PFEIFFER PFRAMES has been built on the premise of creating better customer contact and a wide range of services that can not be found at your local bicycle shop. To use technology, engineering and just plain common sense to answer your questions and to provide an enlightening unique experience when you visit our shop or website. 

Custom Pframes

ALL PFEIFFER CUSTOM  PFRAMES are constructed of the finest steel available today and we are always on the look out for new developments. The steels range from Reynolds' and True Temper's new air hardened 853 and OXRGold respectively to Columbus' new Metax stainless steel tubeset  to standard CrMo, Manganese-moly tubing. The frames are designed for you...your body measurements, weight and riding style. We can even integrate features that you like about your present bikes. The frame tubing is also adjusted to the above design perimeters. Each tube is selected individually for wall thickness, material and length to create the best bike you have ever ridden. For example, if you are short and light then we select longer thin walled tubing for the frameset. This way we remove more of the butt and reduce the weight even further! Why steel?  Here are a few good reasons:

Key Benefits:

• Light weight - believe it or not, the difference between custom steel frame and a comparably priced stock alternative material frame may be 1/2 a pound. Additional, weight reduction  in the frame won't help you climb or sprint, but, build some light weight wheels then your talking!
  
• If you crash it you can fix it! Plain and simple, steel can be rebuilt, straightened and realigned. You can also modify it. We have modified many a frames from a road to touring or cyclocross. Cool huh?.
  
• You don't like the color anymore? Your decals peeling? Refinish it! Heck
  even Aluminum rusts...its called oxidation. Granted you can have some of the other materials refinished, but it costs more because to remove the old finish, radical techniques have to be used.

Joining Methods:

There are many way to join two tubes together. The most popular methods are lugged, welded and fillet brazed. With lugged there are a few ways put frames together. 

The two most popular means are using investment cast lugs or stamped and folded lugs. With investment cast the lugs are made from wax duplicates that are covered in a special mold allowing liquid CrMo steel to be poured into it. These type of lugs provide the highest tolerance (.030 of and inch, roughly four times the width of a human hair). Silver brazing rod (1200 degree) is used with this method because it can seep into these tiny gaps between the lugs and tubing. The lower temperatures don't compromise the thin walled tubes. Stamped and folded lugs are just as their name implies. A flat piece of sheet metal is stamped into a predetermined shape, it is then folded over a mandrel that is shaped like two mitered tubes and welded together. The end result looks the same on the outside as an investment cast lug. The differences however are significant. The stamped and folded lug has large gaps on the inside where the folds took place and this adds to the large tolerance differences between the tube and lug ( .060-.080 of and inch). With these large gaps, a bronze brazing rod (1500 degree) has to be used. Ultra thin walled tubing can not be used with these brazing temperatures (Reynolds 853 has to be brazed at these temperatures).

Another method for joining tubes is welding (2400 degrees). This is the quick and the dirty method for assembling frames. The tubing walls have to be thicker and the butts longer to tolerate the high temperatures of welding. It does take talent to TIG (tungsten inert gas) weld a frame, but the tubing is seriously compromised if not done properly. Typically no finishing is done and the weld joint is left raw and quite ugly (that is my opinion 8^> ). These frames can actually weigh more than a high quality custom lugged frame, contrary to the manufacturer's literature.
A gentler alternative to welding is to fillet braze (1500 degrees) the frames. The joints can be left raw or finished with smooth beautifully flowing contours.  

PFEIFFER PFRAMES uses only the most gentle method of joining a frame. We use high quality investment cast drop-outs, lugs, fork crowns and bottom bracket shells made by Henry James Folson of Henry James Bicycles. These lugs and shells can be CrMo or Stainless steel (all of his drop-outs are stainless). We join the tubing using a Silver brazing rod so that the temperatures never reach the glowing orange color. When assembling lugless frames we use fillet brazing and offer the frames in a finished or unfinished look. We miter all of the tubing using special miter cutters that are a kind of glorified holesaw with a wall thickness of 1/8th of and inch and are razor sharp.

Tubing  

What is a butted tube? A butted tube is, eh ehmm...my theory by An Elk, a butted tube is thicker at one end, much,What is a butted tube?  A butted tube is, eh ehmm...my theory by much thinner in the middle and thicker again at the far end! The wall thickness may vary according to the type of tubing material (Aluminum, titanium or steel), its properties, the method of joining, the tubing diameter and the tubing length. Some tubing is straight gauge, single, double or even triple butted. Spiral butts, internal and external, are also added to increase the strength without increasing the weight significantly. To achieve these butts the tubes can be drawn over a multi- shaped mandrel bar while the steel is almost white hot. It is allowed to cool briefly and then the mandrel is literal punched out of the center of the tube (it is amazing to me that steel is elastic enough to allow the mandrel to be forced out and then snap back to its new shape. Cool, huh!). The wall thickness may vary from 1.0 mm to ultra thin .4 mm. At .4 mm you can literally grab the tube in your hand and squeeze it and you can see it flex. A 1.0 mm wall is typically used for steering columns. A typical top tube and downtube are .8x.6x.8. A seat tube is single butted at the bottom bracket shell. Chainstays and seatstays are .9 and .7 respectively.

Tubing can also have its properties changed through a specific process to give it a higher tensile strength. This can make the tubing super human and super brittle at the same time. These of course are questions that you can ask Mark. 

We sell frames and complete bicycles.

Custom frames

• Road 
• Touring
• Hybrid / Cross
• Off Road
  • Weeks wait 12

Retrofitting services

• On all frames manufactured by any manufacturer
  • Weeks wait 8

Construction methods

• Lugged
• Fillet brazed

Frame materials

• Steel
• Stainless Steel

Purchase from

• We sell direct to consumers only.

PFEIFFER PFRAMES, now known as Koolbikes U.S.A
Contact Persons : Mary or Mark Pfeiffer
Telephone : 864-639-1194
FAX : 864-639-1818
Cell Phone : 864-985-7090

Shipping and Mailing address:
PECO / Koolbikes
727 Church St.
Central, SC 29630

e-mail:  sales@koolbikes.com

Pfeiffer Pframes (Koolbikes U.S.A.) Home

S and S Machine, 9334 Viking Place, Roseville, CA. 95747
TEL. 916-771-0235 FAX 771-0397
e-mail: steve@sandsmachine.com