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Question: What was your favorite onZa product?

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Inspired by this week’s Monday Mystery Pic, I wondered: what was onZa’s best product?  Working at a bike shop in the mid-90s, we saw loads of onZa HO pedals, sold a ton of Porcipaws grips, and paired a lot of Porcupine front tires with Panaracer Smokes out back.  After a long absence from the US and a couple of ownership changes, the brand is coming back to the states with a number of new tires.  Hit the jump for a few suggestions from the first time around- and feel free to weigh in with your experiences…

I remember balls of purple goo being stuck to my gloves after rides... but what's cooler than thin purple grips with porcupines on them?
Remember cable hangers? I'm embarrassed to say that--after cantis were dead-I glued a purple pair into the end of some carbon bars as reinforcements. (from bmxmuseum.com)
How about some HO titanium cranks? They never went into production, so never failed in the way that so many high end cranks of that era did.. (from retrobike.co.uk)
If you've never set up cheap cantis, you have no idea how much nicer the HO brakes were... (from retrobike.co.uk)
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Mike Anderson
Mike Anderson
11 years ago

Man, the pedals were the worst ever, but the grips were good. Brakes were sponge-o-rama,

Sevo
Sevo
11 years ago

I’ll second the grips. And I liked the Onza Raw bar ends.

FoSmith
FoSmith
11 years ago

Grips. I’d still use them if they were available. Those HO pedals sucked so bad…

James
James
11 years ago

Porc II tires! Still have a pair

Alex
Alex
11 years ago
Phil
Phil
11 years ago

That’s easy… it was the Onza Ti Bar Ends!

Brian
Brian
11 years ago

Rail and Rip tire combo.

Kev
Kev
11 years ago

Easy – White Onza Porcs! I remember a shot of Jo Burt (i think) in MBUK where it looked like he had done a big skid with his white porcs, but there was a big white chalk line on the ground leading up to his tyre. Funny! Least back then it were…

Ryan
Ryan
11 years ago

Ummmm, the Onza pedals were so cool looking. They had ELASTOMER TECHNOLOGY for God’s sake!!

Gummee!
Gummee!
11 years ago

Those HO brakes work fairly well for cross. I should know I have a bag full of em! Only changed em out when I found a pair of Mafacs for cheap up in Idyllwild.

I still have at least one Chill Pill somewhere. Not the purple tho. Never did purple.

Sold a bunch of Porcupine tires but never ran one myself.

Now, who has some Brew Jugs they want to sell?!

M

professorVelo
professorVelo
11 years ago

the smoke/dart tire combo worked great.

@gummee, you should contact brew directly. he may still have some floating around.

Larry Falk
Larry Falk
11 years ago

Elastomers in the pedals were very temperature sensitive so you never knew what type of release you were getting!! Not good!! Brakes were very easy to adjust.

JOHN KLINKENBERG
JOHN KLINKENBERG
11 years ago

By far the cranks because they were so protoype, titanium and had just glimpses of them in the magazines of the day to make you drool. Nothing these days really does that for me anymore. From memory they were out just before Magic Motorcycle blew the world away withere crank concepts.
Onza was a great company, its a shame they are no more. Close second product were gum coloured porcupines!!

JOHN KLINKENBERG
JOHN KLINKENBERG
11 years ago

also professor velo smoke and dart were panaracer!!

bar ends
bar ends
11 years ago

IMO Onza made the bar end popular!

Yeahaaa!!!_
Yeahaaa!!!_
11 years ago

The bar ends were always cool looking.

John
John
11 years ago

Onza Ules. If I could still get these I would never buy another grip.

Mr. P
11 years ago

Some of their bar ends would make a porn star blush.

P

Scott
Scott
11 years ago

The sticker. 2nd was the Raw bar ends.

Craig
Craig
11 years ago

Easy – their crazy C.R.S. (Cantilevered Rigid Suspension) frame and fork (both steel) with the Swiss-cheesed dropouts featured in a MBA spread 21(?) summers ago. I wish I could find a picture of it. But I also loved those vaporware cranks, the H.O. pedals (although I never had a pair), the Mongo II headset, the H.O. brakes, and the Ti bar ends. I still have a NIB pair of the Ti bar ends with the polished CWA clamps.

The Dude
The Dude
11 years ago

The H.O.’s were my first clipless pedals. Same with all my friends back in the summer of ’95 (?). I made the grand decision a couple years after that to get upgrade to the KORE G.A.S.S pedals, mostly because they were available in blue powderocat.

This discussion would be absolutely impossible on Pinkbike…

guy
guy
11 years ago

The Ti cranks had to be their best product seeing as they never reached production resulting in a steller zero dissapointment rating. Most, if not all of their products worked best while staying idle in show cases. I did love how the porcupine grips shed so much weight from the bike while adding callus weight to your hands. BUT THEN, there were the H.O.X. pedals. An amazingly futile attempt at a convertable “light weight” downhill pedal; or just remove the cage for slightly less mud clogged impossible to release (yes, even compared to early Shimano) sensation. AAAANNNNNNNDDDD their having another go at it?
Dollars>Sense.

AXIS
AXIS
11 years ago

Onza chill pills

Rinuswaki
Rinuswaki
11 years ago

Nobody is mentioning the stainless buzz saw rings ! I found them a revolution ( at the time 😉 ). Thank god that we have surley now.
And what about those stems with the funky asymetrical rollers ? They were fun ! You could set up your canti,s so they woud brake with only one finger.

Olgierd
11 years ago

Onza Pro Cut — the best bar ends ever. I bought them with my GT Tequesta back in 98′ or 99′ and since then use them on each of my bikes.

Shane Wilson
Shane Wilson
11 years ago

Their best product was definitely the cool little porcupine stickers. Only thing they made that worked consistently!

wunnspeed
11 years ago

The pedals were either love or hate. I happened to love them. The brakes were the BOMB though. Almost nothing before or since was so easily adjustable. I recently did a review of some Onza tires on twentynineinches.com.

huelse
huelse
11 years ago

Buzz Saw Chainrings

Matt
Matt
11 years ago

The Rip and Rail tires were awesome back in the day. Their pedals were crude and horrible.

Shaun
Shaun
11 years ago

Pro cut bar ends. Still have them still think they are the most comfortable bar ends.

Rohan
Rohan
11 years ago

Liked their bar ends and tires. Their brakes and tires I never tried so don’t know but their bar ends rocked

satisFACTORYrider
satisFACTORYrider
11 years ago

The masters class is big me thinks

professorVelo
professorVelo
11 years ago

@john klinkenberg…

somehow that didn’t seem right. I’m beginning to question whether I had anything Onza at all…

dang.

Jrad
Jrad
11 years ago

@Gummie! Wanna sell me a pair of HO’s. Mail me (yellow_squash(at)yahoo(dot you know what)

The most happiness from an Onza product was probably the Porcs. And yes with a smoke in the rear

The pedal were a great idea but poor execution.

Bob
Bob
11 years ago

Onza Ules’ grips. I even bought 6 pr when they went under just to have them for a while.

yannick
yannick
11 years ago

The stickers.

Gregg Westmoreland
Gregg Westmoreland
11 years ago

Wow. This takes me back. I was the General Manager of onZa from 1991 to 1993 and then ran onZa Europe til they went bankrupt in 1996. Lent them the money to get started in 1989. Trust me folks, it was THE coolest company and we tried to make every single product THE most innovative and work the best. And just to set the record straight, the Smoke and Dart tires from Panaracer came directly from Dave and Dan at onZa. I was there at Panaracer in Japan when Dan came up with the first “directional” tire, the Dart. Slashing away on the chalk board, erasing, and then slashing away again, came the design. But that was how it was with all onZa product development. Go for the fences. Hit the homerun. And ALL were completely tested by the top pros of the day. In production, some came out better than others. But it was a one of a kind company and I am very glad I was a big part of it. Now Shut Up and Ride!!!!!

Steve
11 years ago

Buzz Saw chainring. I’m still using one on my CX bike.

SYJ
SYJ
11 years ago

Racing Porcs (tires) – preferably in the soft white compound (although I did like my purple anodized bar ends an awful lot)

I actually liked the pedals, but at the time I: a) worked in a shop that carried cannondale (who spec’d them on their new bikes), so I had a steady stream of takeoffs with good elastomers; and b) lived in the southwest, and so didn’t have to deal with winter temperatures freezing the bumpers solid

Turqoise anodize makes me wise
Turqoise anodize makes me wise
11 years ago

I still have some of those pedals in a parts bin somewhere, and they_ blow_goats. I can’t count how many times I got stuck in those things…but options were limited in the early days – those or Shimano’s.

Actually, none of it was very good. Even considering the OK stuff, like grips, there was something else I would have rather had.

I guess that explains why they disappeared.

Simon
Simon
11 years ago

White Porcupines
I also liked their bar ends for the matt paint.

uglyyeti
uglyyeti
11 years ago

As I’ve said before, the porcupine sticker is the best Onza product I’ve owned. I still have a new one – never been stuck. I worked in a shop in the Onza heyday – tried a lot of their stuff. The barends seem to be the popular Onza favorites – I loved ski-bend Control Stix, so I never tried Onza’s – maybe I missed out. I’d like to find a set of the ti ones.

Another thing I never used were Chill Pills. First Flight/MOMBAT in Statesville, NC has hundreds if not thousands of NOS sets in stock. Enough to keep EBay stocked for years.

Of the parts I did use:

Porcupine grips – had a few pair of these. They got gummy and gooey in the heat and tore pretty easily.

HO Pedals – had the ones with the flexy ti spindles. Haven’t run ti spindles on anything since. The disdain for these pedals seems to be regional. Frozen elastomers wouldn’t release. I live in the South – hot elastomers jettisoned on a hair-trigger.

HO Brakes (or “breaks”) The Onza HO brake setup guide: Slips (tighten), slips (tighten), still slips (another nudge), CRACK.

Porcupine tires: Had several, including a white one. The fact that Greg Herbold was winning downhills and dual slaloms on this tire is a solid testament to the H-Ball legend. Porcs had the tread profile of Tomac’s flat top buzz cut – nothing angular on the sides – everything pointed up. Too much lean in a hard pack corner and the tire would tip over. The round tread nubs had the braking grab of a pencil eraser. The wirebead tires had such thick sidewalls they barely need air – stiff as a car tire. The folding porcs were much more forgiving, but still lacked grab. They were the first tire that really shed mud pretty well, but then again, they didn’t grip much in mud either. Herbold’s a hero for hangin’ it out on these things.

Onza’s contribution to the industry may have been valuable lessons in marketing, hype, and “don’t do it this way”. Maybe some of the crappy stuff lead others to a better design. To be fair, I broke a lot of other high zoot CNC’d parts in the 90’s too – it wasn’t just Onza.

alloycowboy
alloycowboy
11 years ago

It is definetly the Onza bar end that Onza is best known for because they made them popular and saved a lot of mountain bikers from Cyclist Palsy, Ulnar Neuropathy, Handle Bar Palsy. Hopefully with Onza’s return to the US market Bar Ends will become popular again and cyclists will once again have happy hands.

jb
jb
11 years ago

tires, they were really good! why not make a full onza 650b range.-)

MH
MH
11 years ago

CWA Bar ends were the bomb in their day. Remember how stoked I was to get a yellow pair when I was 19.

Jim
Jim
11 years ago

The old Racing Porc tires!!! Bring these babies back in 29er sizes – say 2.2″ and 2.4″ and keep ’em white and black with skinwalls!!!

http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/files/porc1_175.jpg

Jamey
Jamey
11 years ago

I think I had an anodized canti yoke from Onza. Had some neat adjustment trick that I cannot recall at the moment. Looked trick, too…

uglyyeti
uglyyeti
11 years ago

@Gregg Westmoreland – The Dart was a fantastic front tire, maybe the first fantastic front tire, for all the reasons the Porcupine wasn’t. It cornered, it gripped, and it stopped better than anything else at the time.
We all tried Porcs because the alternatives (FJ Cousins, Ground Controls) loaded up with mud – Porcs solved that problem, but kinda sucked otherwise because of those mud-averse round knobs. If that tire lead to the Dart, I’m glad I bought my fair share of Porcs to keep you guys going in the right direction.

Hugh Jass
Hugh Jass
11 years ago

The Sticker! It’s still on the stem of my beater Rock Hopper Comp.

Sammo
11 years ago

The bar ends were mean! The brakes looked cool and had good adjustment.

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