Bullseye — Roger Durham's Sealed-Bearing Hubs and Hurricane Cranks

A Legend Bike Co. brand history page · sources: a 2008 bmxultra.com interview with Bullseye's Steven Jackson, bullseyecycleusa.com, and community records from bmxsociety.com

At a glance

Founded 1973, Burbank, California
Founder Roger Durham
Known for Sealed cartridge-bearing hubs, the Hurricane crank, sealed BMX pedals
BMX peak 1985-87
Status Relaunched 2008 as Bullseye Cycle USA, still selling today

Bullseye never ran a factory team the way GT or Redline did, and it never built a whole bike. What it built was the part underneath everything else — the hub and the crank — and it built them to a standard most of BMX wasn’t asking for yet. This is BMX's chapter of the Bullseye story: how a general precision-components company out of Burbank became a name serious racers chased, and what's left of it today.

Roger Durham, and the chainring that came first

Roger Durham founded Bullseye Cycle in 1973 in Burbank, California, not long after graduating from Cal State L.A. Bullseye wasn't his first company. A year earlier, in 1972, he'd released the Durham Elliptical chainring under an earlier venture, Durham Bicycle (later Durham Bikes). Bullseye grew out of that same instinct — take a standard cycling part and rebuild it to a tighter tolerance than the rest of the industry bothered with.

The sealed hub that started it

Bullseye's first hub, released in 1973, is remembered as the second sealed cartridge-bearing hub built for bicycles — and the first with an interchangeable hollow one-piece axle. Sealed derailleur pulleys followed the same year. In the original Burbank era these were hand-built parts: hand-made jigs, hand-welded assembly, no CNC or computer-assisted machining. That came later, with the modern relaunch — the 1970s and 80s originals were precision work done by hand.

The Hurricane crank and the rest of the line

Bullseye's other signature part was the Hurricane, a two-piece 4130 chromoly crank. It was prototyped around 1974-75; the release to the public is generally dated to around 1978 per Bullseye's own 2008 interview, though a bmxsociety.com collector thread separately references "1979 Hurricanes" — the exact release year isn't fully settled between those two accounts, and we're not picking one. Sealed bottom brackets rounded out the drivetrain side, and in 1980 Bullseye added sealed BMX pedals, later sold under the name Pro Round.

BMX's high-water years

Bullseye's BMX-specific demand grew through the first half of the 1980s and peaked in 1985-87, when the company ran around 12 employees and BMX orders reportedly overshadowed the rest of its product line. The reputation that built up around the brand in this stretch was a premium one: sealed-bearing precision parts, often finished in bright anodized colors, were still uncommon on BMX bikes at the time, and secondary sources describe Bullseye hubs and cranks as priced and positioned above typical factory equipment. No period price list or magazine ad from the era was confirmed in the sources checked for this page, so that reputation is reported as documented sentiment rather than a verified price point.

The wind-down and the 2008 return

Sales declined through the 1990s alongside the broader BMX industry slump. New-component production stopped in 1995, and the Burbank operation closed in 1996; Roger Durham relocated, semi-retired, to Yucca Valley, California. The brand sat dormant until 2008, when a relaunch led by Steven Jackson brought it back as Bullseye Cycle USA for the company's 35th anniversary. It's still active today, selling hubs, cranks, pedals, stems, and V-brakes, describing its manufacturing as US-based with some overseas-sourced production.

Where the record runs thin

• The Hurricane crank's exact release year. 1978 (per the founder-era interview) versus 1979 (per a bmxsociety.com collector thread title). Both are on record; neither is confirmed as definitive.
• Specific 1980s factory-team riders or magazine ad placements. Direct searches of oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com did not turn up a confirmed period roster or ad campaign for this page. The company's present-day sponsored riders are current-era and not cited here as BMX-history-era facts.
• Whether a current Bullseye Cycle USA memorial-page name ("Jeff Jackson") refers to the same person as the 2008 interviewee ("Steven Jackson"). Not confirmed either way; not stated as fact.

Related Legend Bike Co. chapters

• The History of BMX (1970-1995)

Sources

bmxultra.com, interview with Steven Jackson, Bullseye Cycle (2008) — founding date, founder, product-development timeline, hand-built manufacturing detail, sales decline, and 2008 relaunch. bullseyecycleusa.com — current company description and product catalog. bmxsociety.com — collector threads on Bullseye hubs, hollow axles, and the Hurricane crank release-year question (site returned search-indexed thread titles and snippets rather than full page content during research; disclosed honestly). oldschoolmags.com — searched directly for Bullseye coverage in the BMX Action, BMX Plus!, and Super BMX archive; no fetchable Bullseye-specific content located this pass. americancycle.com and bikeforums.net — general secondary commentary on Bullseye's premium-parts reputation.