I would place the start of Bullseye about 1975. Some die hard megatouring friends of mine had experienced failures of Phil hubs (before Phil grease!) and were all psyched about these hubs that would come apart with set screws so the bearings could be replaced. We had the tools to replace Phil bearings but I suspect about ten shops in the country could help you with that problem.
I have a pair of the Bullseye BBs on my very early Santana tandem. Kool units but the small inch thread grade 8 crank bolts take some nerve to torque up.
I built my first all sealed bearing bike in 1975 (short of headset) so I was trying to keep up with all the machine shops cranking out this sort of stuff. Nineteen pounds and no drillium. But a prototype Nitto Pearl stem, factory drilled up the center with alloy bolts and binder! Hatta Swan alloy headset, Hi-E hubs, Reedy pedals, Teledyne BB. People snickered at the start lines but I knew what I had.
Joe Bender-Zanoni
Great Notch, New Jersey
>
> In a message dated 7/4/03 6:16:25 PM, dbilenkey@sympatico.ca writes:
>
> >Anyone have any definitive dates or memories of when Bullseye sealed
bearing
> >hubs became available? I'm pretty sure that they were available before
'83
> >but I'd love to know exactly when they first became available. Also if
> >anyone has any images of early/original hubs, I'd like to see them, also
> >I'm curious to know if they came with skewers and if so what they looked
> like.
> >I'm trying to date a set of wheels I just acquired, they have the older
> >oval
> >sticker on the shells.
> >
> We were using them in the early 70s but Rodger is still around, why not
ask
> him? And the hubs didn't come with skewers but Allen bolts with really
nice
> heavy beveled washers. The axles were hollow in the normal way so you
could use a
> skewer.
> Phil Brown
> San Rafael, Ca