Rocky Mountain

Rocky Mountain: We build bikes for people who love to ride. It's the core of what we do. We know that there are a million different types of riders out there. People who love long, epic rides; people who love sessioning the jump park; people who love cross-country racing, and those who just love it all. The combinations are endless, and so are the possibilities.

At Rocky Mountain,® all our bike designs are developed in house. With full-time engineers and an exclusive prototype lab run by our legendary welder, Al Kowalchuk, we can turn concepts into reality in less than a week. It is a luxury that allows us to test different designs and ideas whenever we feel inspired. With hard riding engineers, professional riders, and unlimited warehouse trials sessions at our disposal, that happens constantly.

Tubing Material

We handbuild our frames using namebrand tubing for the pros at Easton and Reynolds. Before welding, we mitre, one at a time, the end of each piece of tubing to hairline tolerances. Why do you care? Precise mitring results in a stronger, long-lasting bicycle frame. We build frames straight from the beginning, so they stay straight. It is an attention to detail most Rocky Mountain owners never see, but one that results in our legendary tight responsiveness and bomber resiliency.

Component Construction

To meet the exacting standards of our frame designs, we need to manufacture very specific pieces of metal. Our in-house CNC machines enable us to create innovative parts like the yoke on our ThrustLink suspension. This in-house technology allows us to tweak and re-design parts as need be, and to manufacture components to our exacting standards.

Handbuilt Frames

Before our welders start work on a Rocky Mountain frame, the mitred tubes are placed together and clamped into position with our frame size, bike, and tube specific custom jigs. Once the frame is aligned perfectly, each tube is "tacked" into place by a small spot weld. The end result of this detailed work is a precision-built, strong, and highly responsive frame that brings out the performance of the tubing we use.

Welding

At Rocky Mountain we pride ourselves on having some of the best welders in the business. We reinforce this pride by having each individual sign the frames they build. It takes years of experience before someone can work on one of our bikes because, quite simply, our welds need to be perfect. After each frame is welded, it is inspected on an alignment table to verify that it is perfect.

Painting

After each frame is checked individually by an EC Meter to ensure it has reached the optimum level of material hardness, frames are prepped for one beautiful paint job. Each frame is filed and sanded, by hand, to ensure no impurities will upset the final coat. From here the frame goes through a five stage cleaning and pre-coating process to further eliminate any unseen contaminants. Then, in our in-house painting facility, our frames are powder coated with electro-statically charged paint particles and cured at 450¡, resulting in a stronger, more chip-resistant paint job, which is also environmentally friendly.

High-end bikes receive individually hand-masked paint jobs that can take up to 3 hours for each frame. The end result is a beautiful, durable and longer-lasting finish.

Frame Preparation and Assembly

Once the coating process is complete, all frames have their bearing surfaces faced (cleaned of paint) and any threaded surfaces are chased to remove excess material. While this is taking place, the bike's wheels are being built a stone's throw away. At Rocky Mountain® we're so sticky about quality that we don't even let other people build our wheels. Wheeltechª, the Rocky Mountain in-house wheel brand, uses the industry's most reputable rims, Mavic and Sun, and incorporates a time-tested practice whereby each wheel is carefully tensioned, trued and stress relieved twice to ensure a long, straight life. We also have our wheels signed by its builder. Building our wheels right beside our bikes allows us to test each frame for wheel positioning and alignment before we ship them out. When the package is finally complete, our bikes sport the best name brand quality components from around the world: Marzocchi, Maxxis, Race Face, Sun, Fox Shox, Hayes, Easton, Selle Italia, and Shimano. And then, finally, they're ready for you.

We're serious about the quality of every Rocky Mountain Bicycle, enough to put it down on paper. Every bike we build leaves our factory with a Quality Control Record on it. Every department, from welding to wheel building, must hand sign on every bike to ensure each element of its construction meets or exceeds our high standards. It's our way of showing you all the effort we put into building a Rocky Mountain Bicycle.

Ride the Difference.