ABOUT US

Who Are We?

SN-Vitae designs and manufactures high-precision cycling components. Founder Phil Wilson has spent over 20 years working in and around engineering environments such as Aerospace and Formula One and now applies the same uncompromising approach to cycling. The methods are complex, but the goal is simple – to use the highest levels of engineering to make better components and improve the ride experience.

Phil Wilson is a lifelong cyclist and fan of professional cycling. As a junior, he competed against future big-name riders before choosing to pursue a career in engineering. These days, with a family as well as his own businesses, he rides for fun when he can.

What does the brand’s name mean? It’s a play on an engineering term; the S-N curve. This nominally describes the relation between cyclic stress amplitude and number of cycles to failure. ‘Vitae’ is Latin for ‘life’. In essence, it’s about making products to last a lifetime.
 

Why SN-VITAE?

SN-Vitae stands for performance through precision. The brand’s mission is to elevate the quality, efficiency, durability and functionality of cycling components by applying higher standards of engineering, all with the ultimate goal of the best possible rider experience.

We cut friction, not corners. When you fit an SN-Vitae product, you’re installing confidence – confidence that it’s the very best it can be, that you won’t be wasting even a fraction of a watt, that it won’t let you down, and that you won’t have to replace it again for years.
 

Bottom Brackets

Once your bottom bracket is installed, few people will even see it and no one will appreciate the painstakingly accurate machining process that ensures the bearings bores are machined to provide enhanced bore alignment for the smoothest of running, but we manufacture the best way for the performance not the pose value.

Compromise is a dirty word. Compared to the 800bhp+ F1 cars from which we learned our engineering ethos, the one or maybe two horsepower (735-1470W) you can put into a bike, even in a flat-out sprint, may seem small but it comes with its own engineering challenges. For the most part, these are driven by weight and manufacturing cost. The Press-fit bottom bracket standard, for example, is a very good, very light solution, but it requires extremely high-accuracy in the manufacturing of carbon fibre frames and that’s expensive, so it often gets compromised. The result is too often a poor fit, which is one reason why the bearing cups can move in the frame and make a noise. The other is poorly designed bottom brackets. Our single-piece Module One is the cure for a creaking bottom bracket and it’s typical of our free-thinking, solution-driven approach to design.