Cyfac

Cyfac is a manufacturer of racing bicycle frames based in La Fuye, Hommes, Indre-et-Loire, France. Its founder, Francis Quillon, started as a racer but became a frame builder. An accomplished amateur, he also worked as a welder for the team's sponsor. In between races, Francis did repairs on his teammates' bikes, eventually building entire frames for the sponsor. Word spread and, soon enough, young Francis was building frames for many of the area's local racers, putting paid to his competitive career and leading to the opening of Cyfac. Francis' reputation for building beautifully crafted, custom framesets spread and the shop's clientele of professionals and top-level amateurs grew.

Innovations

Cyfac pioneered the use of carbon-fiber seat and chain stays on their aluminum frames, the design of which is called the Cyfac double stay design. The advantage of this design is better comfort compared to the monolink design that is prevalent among racing bicycles (such as on the Columbus Muscle stays). The monolink design was used in earlier carbon seat/chain stay design in order to save costs, since only one piece needs to be welded to the main triangle of the frame.

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Francis Quillon designed the keyhole-shaped aluminum tubing that is widely copied, such as in the Columbus Airplane tubeset. The advantage is increased stiffness for the same weight, and improved riding characteristic.

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In recent years Cyfac has specialized in making custom full-carbon framesets utilizing mitre-cut tubing which allows full-carbon, full-custom construction. This method allows the designer to add more layers of kevlar and carbon to different parts of the frameset while allowing a fully custom-sized frame.

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In 2003 the Cyfac Posturale System, a new bike fitting system based on scientific studies of performance improvements of cyclists conducted in France is released. It is implemented using a set of measurement-assisting devices for accurate measurements of the riders' anatomical characteristics.

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