As Smooth As Friction

• SunTour VGT rear derailleur 
• Shimano Titlist front derailleur 
• Huret shift levers (similar to Simplex retrofriction )
• Stronglight 93 crankset and chainrings 
• SunTour Pro Compe freewheel
• Sedis “sedicolor” chain (gold, to match the freewheel!)

• Huret Jubilee rear derailleur 
• Campagnolo Super Record front derailleur 
• Simplex retrofriction (“teardrop “) levers
• Campagnolo Super Record crankset and chainrings 
• Maillard 700 freewheel 
• Regina chain

So what do those two lists have in common? Each of them comprised the drivetrain on one of my bikes. The first ran on an iteration of my Peugeot PX-10 when I repurposed it as a touring bike. The second graced the Colnago Arabesque I rode for much of my inglorious racing career!

One thing you’ll notice is that neither set was composed entirely of parts from the same company. Until the mid 1980s, that was the norm, as no component manufacturer—not even Shimano or Campagnolo—offered a truly complete “gruppo”: Neither company’s lines included chains, and Campagnolo didn’t offer freewheels.

Another reason why most were casseroles , so to speak, rather than purées is that, for the most part, one firm’s derailleurs could be used with another’s shift levers, freewheels, chainrings and chains. It also didn’t matter if you switched from, say, a six- to a seven-speed freewheel: As long as your derailleurs could handle the range (smallest to largest cogs) and the total gear difference (the combined range of your front chainrings and rear sprockets), it didn’t matter that the other parts weren’t from the same maker.

That all changed 40 years ago, when Shimano introduced SIS: the system with shifters that “clicked.” It

worked extremely well—as long as your freewheel (or cassette) cogs, chain, derailleurs, shifters and cables were all Shimano SIS. (Many of us soon discovered that Sedisport chains worked as well as, and lasted longer than, Shimano’s offerings.) By the end of the decade, nearly all new bikes had SIS or its variants, two of which I’ll mention. “If it doesn’t click, it won’t sell,” became a bike industry mantra.

Seemingly in a panic, Campagnolo and SunTour offered their own “click shift” systems. (SunTour actually made one in 1969. It reportedly worked well, but the still-relatively-small derailleur-equipped bike market wasn’t ready for it.) Both failed—Campagnolo’s Syncro system was panned as “Stinkro”—for essentially the same reason. While Shimano designed an integrated system, it seemed that Campagnolo and SunTour simply made indexed levers. The “clicks” didn’t always mesh with the gear change because they were the calibrated to the distance between the cogs. 

Campagnolo’s Syncro wasn’t produced for very long and seems to have found popularity mainly among collectors. “Campy” was able to redeem itself during the ‘90’s, when it made an integrated system (with Ergo levers) that worked well. SunTour, on the other hand, never recovered from its failed system (and, to be fair, other missteps). Its reputation was made worse because bike-makers like Schwinn used their old stocks of French cables and chains that didn’t play nice with SunTour’s click shift.

SunTour’s fate is a particularly sad irony when you consider that a generation of cyclists like me could replace a malfunctioning Huret Allvit, Simplex Prestige or Campagnolo Valentino or Gran Turismo—or an ailing Atom or Regina freewheel—with something from SunTour without re-doing the rest of the bike.

Part of the reason why that was possible was “friction “ shifting, as Eben Weiss points out in his latest Outside article. He cites that compatibility as the reason why, after decades of using indexed shifting and a brief fling with electronic changers, he’s converting all of his bikes to friction shifting.

I may do the same. It wouldn’t be difficult, really.Of my seven bikes, five have derailleurs. (The other two include a fixed-gear and single-speed.) Two of the five shift with Simplex retrofriction levers. The other three—Dee-Lilah (my Mercian Vincitore Special), La-Vande (King of Mercia) and Vera (Miss Mercian mixte) have Dura-Ace 9-speed downtube levers. I’m using them in indexed mode but they can be converted to friction levers simply with a turn of the adjuster ring. I would do that, of course, if I were to use 8- or 10-speed cassettes instead of the 9s I’m currently running.

Whither Campagnolo?

Photo by Will Jones

I can still remember the day I finally attained a full-Campagnolo Record-equipped bicycle.

My Trek 930 racing bike, made from Columbus SL tubing, had one last non-Campy part:  Galli brakes.  They were essentially lighter-weight Italian versions of late-1970s Dura-Ace.  I'd bought them for another bike because the price was reasonable and they were gold anodized--which, I thought, looked really bad-ass on the bike which, like the Trek, was black.

One of the mail-order companies--Nashbar, I believe--ran a dead-of-winter sale on Campy and other stuff.  I bought the brakes, for even less than I could have had them with my employees' discount (i.e., wholesale price) at Highland Park Cyclery, where I'd been working the previous season.  Frank, the owner and head mechanic, said he didn't blame me for buying them at that price--$59.00, if I remember correctly.  (They typically sold for around $80-100 in the early 1980s.)  

Did the Campagnolo Record Brakes stop or modulate any more efficiently than the Gallis?  No.  But in those days, having a bike that was tutti Campagnolo was like having a book by your favorite writer inscribed and signed by that writer.  Just as having such a volume wouldn't make you a better writer,  having a set of components designed by Tullio himself, and made by little elves in Vicenza (all right, I know that's not true)--and, more to the point, ridden by nearly everyone in the professional peloton--didn't make you ride faster or break the wind for you.  But it sure felt as if Campy's stuff--even his gold-plated corkscrew--held some sort of mystique.

Oh, and better yet, I had an all-Italian bike.  Well, sort of.  The Trek frame was made in the US--by Tim Isaacson--but, as I mentioned, from Columbus SL tubing (the lightest available at the time) in a more-or-less Italian style.  Oh, and the French Mavic rims and Ideale 2002 saddle (my favorite racing saddle at the time), were "honorary Italian:"  members of the peloton and rich Sunday riders alike rode them on their Campy-equipped machines.  Ditto for the DT spokes.

Now, to be fair, Campagnolo Record components had a mostly-deserved reputation for performance and durability.  To this day, I don't think a better traditional ball-bearing hub or bottom bracket has been made.  While the brakes weren't the best at braking, and the cranks sometimes cracked under heavy use, they held up well for most riders and were beautiful.

But even if you never won--or entered--a race, having a Campagnolo Record-equipped bike gave you cred, to yourself and possibly to others who shared your obsession or were simply status seekers.

It's that last group of riders --or, in some cases, non-riders-- who, according to Will Jones, Davide Campagnolo (the grandson of founder Tullio) is courting.  The Cycling News tech writer, in sighing, "meh!" to the Campagnolo's latest offerings, wondered about the company's direction, if any.  He got his answer in Signor Davide's declaration that Campagnolo is becoming a "sports luxury" brand.

He's thus said the quiet part out loud. Although Campagnolo had a near-monopoly on the peloton for about two decades, many weekend cyclists bought their stuff as much for prestige as for performance.  So, in that sense, for those who weren't racing or racking up thousands of miles every year, Campagnolo has been indeed a luxury brand.

Jones inferred that the emphasis will be on "luxury."  That, to me, begs this question:  How would whatever Davide is planning be different from, say,  Armani or Versace offering bicycle clothing? Or Ferragamo cycling shoes or Gucci bike bags or other accessories?

Here is another indication that the emphasis will be on status and fashion:  Last year, among World Tour teams (the ones that compete in the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and other prestigious races)  only AG2R-Citroen's bikes sported the Italian maker's components. This year, no World Tour team is riding them.

Barelli: Raising The Bar On The Hill

Throughout my life, I've read various books, poems and other works of literature that brought me into other worlds.  Among them are, of course, Shakespeare's plays and Charlotte Bronte's Villette (which I liked even better than Wuthering Heights). Currently, I'm reading Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys, which brings me into yet another world I can scarcely imagine.

While it wasn't a work of great literature, in its own way the Palo Alto Bicycle catalogue did something similar for me.  Its pages were filled with images and descriptions of equipment even more exotic--and less affordable--than Campagnolo's.  At that time, I probably could've counted, on one hand, the number of Campy-equipped bikes ridden by people I actually knew.  So, in perusing the pages of PAB, I found myself imagining, not only the components themselves, but the folks who rode (or simply bought) them.

Among those parts were pedals that, to this day, I have not seen in "real life" but recently came across on eBay when I was looking for another part. In the mid-1970s, it seemed that every other cyclist with an engineering background, or simply a lathe, was trying to improve in one way or another in what they were spinning in races or club rides.  Among those folks were Bob Reedy, the folks at East Rochester Tool and Die--and Geoff Chapman.

A member of Cambridge (Town & County) Cycle Club in the UK, Chapman owned an engineering firm in nearby Bar Hill.   He would use a near-anagram of that name, with an Italian touch,  for the brand of his products:  Barelli.

At that time, the North American Bike Boom had crested.  Many of classic British builders were still producing their legendary frames, but the country's bike component industry was in steep decline, in part  because some manufacturers didn't update their designs or factory equipment.  As an example, Williams, which made some of those pencil-thin cottered cranksets found on classic British lightweights, finally produced a cotterless crankset--years after Campagnolo, Stronglight, Specialites TA and other companies introduced theirs.   And Sturmey-Archer, which was all but synonymous with internally-geared hubs, was losing not only because derailleurs had become more popular, but also because the quality of its products was slipping. (SA 3-speed hubs made from about the mid-80s until 2000, when the company went into receivership and was bought by SunRace, are all but unrideable.)  

So it was interesting, to say the least, that someone like Chapman would not only try to improve upon the design of what he was riding, but would also produce something worthy, quality-wise, of a Jack Taylor, Bob Jackson, Mercian, Hetchins or Ron Cooper frame.

Barelli Supreme

Barelli B-10

He seems to have produced two models: the Supreme and B10.  The former looks like an amalgam of platform pedals like the Lyotard Berthet and traditional quill pedals.  The latter took a shoe cleat that fit into the body and was secured with a traditional toe clip and strap.  (Shoe cleats of that time typically had a slot that fit onto the pedal cage.)  The B10, perhaps not surprisingly, seems to have had some following among track riders because it had such a secure hold which some described as "impossible to get out of."

That might be the reason why Barelli didn't share the same fate as Reedy and ERTD, whose designs were used by companies like SunTour. While Reedy and ERTD were really just lighter and more aerodynamic versions of traditional pedals (albeit with sealed bearings and a nicer finishes), Barellis--especially the B10--might have been just too radical.  Or the difficulty of dismounting B10s might have reminded them of the Cinelli M71, often nicknamed the "suicide" pedal.

So, while I'd like to see some Barellis in "real life," and might buy a pair if I were more of a collector (or simply had more money), it's probably a good thing I couldn't afford them when they appeared in the Palo Alto Bicycle catalogue.

You Can't Sell Snow To The Eskimos Or Buy This In England

 Last week, the United Kingdom's "divorce" from the European Union, commonly called "Brexit," took effect.  Not surprisingly, this has affected the country's bicycle business--though, in some instances, in unintended ways.

Anyone who has ever reported on business and finance will tell you, "The markets don't like uncertainty."  The stock exchanges, whether in New York or London or Tokyo, usually fall when traders don't know who will be in offices or what policies will or won't be in place.  And businesspeople don't like to make investments when a change in a law could adversely affect them.

So it's no surprise that, for the time being, Canyon, based in Germany, stopped shipping bikes to the UK on 19 December.  A message on the company's website says that this stoppage will continue at least until Monday the 11th and is a result of "changes in tariffs and logistics in clearing points of entry into the UK."  

In other words, Canyon wants more clarity--more certainty--about the UK's new policies on imports from the EU.   So does Campagnolo, which has suspended all deliveries to the UK as the Italian component and wheel maker is "awaiting for EU dispositions in regards to the Brexit situation."

Now, it makes sense that because Italy is part of the EU, Campagnolo would want more certainty about Brexit-induced shipping and tariff regulations before sending its derailleurs and brakes to Derby or Birmingham.  But an Italian wish for clarity about policies is also delaying or halting deliveries of at least one British company's products--including what might be the most iconic English bike part of all.

Brooks leather saddles, including the B-17, Professional and Swift, are still made in England.  They are, however, shipped to a distribution center in Italy--where Brooks' parent company, Selle Royal, is based.  (SR purchased Brooks in 2002.)  From there, orders are shipped worldwide--including to UK customers.

You can buy this--as long as you don't want it delivered to you in England!

That is, at least, how things work in normal (whatever that means anymore) times.  But for the time being, "ongoing changes in the Brexit situation have made it necessary to suspend all new orders from brooksengland.com to the UK."  The company's website doesn't give a timeline as to when shipments to UK customers might resume.

A Shift In The Middle Of The Tour

"Brooks" of Retrogrouch frame is so kind.  Last month, we wrote posts on the same topic, days apart, without prior consultation.  He said, "You know what they say about great minds."  Now, I would never, ever give myself such credit.  Really!

Anyway, I wrote about a pair of Simplex bar end shifters, still in their original packaging, I saw at Tony's  Bicycles in Astoria.  I also espied a pair of Shimano bar-ends from the same era (1970s) in Tony's showcase.

Little more than a week later, Brooks wrote his excellent post about bar-end shifters in general.  As he points out, they offer most of the advantages of integrated brake/shift levers ("brifters") without their vulnerability to damage--and expense.  Brooks then discussed some of the different bar-end shifters made during the 1970s--when they seem to have been the most popular--and today.  

He does mention something very interesting but almost entirely forgotten:  Campagnolo has offered bar-end shifters at least since the early 1950s-- around the time they introduced the Gran Sport, their first parallelogram rear derailleur.  The funny thing is that when that derailleur first saw the light of day, Campagnolo wasn't offering a down-tube shifter--which are commonly associated with classic Campy-equipped racing bikes-- to go with it.  Why?

Well, it has to do with front derailleurs of the time.   You see, front changers at the time weren't operated by Bowden-type cable controls.  Instead, a direct lever moved the cage that shifted the chain from one chainring to another.  These are sometimes jokingly referred to as "suicide shifters" because, in order to make the shift, riders had to spread their legs.  

That arrangement also meant that riders did all of their shifting with their right hands.  (Nearly all rear derailleurs are operated by levers on the right side of the bike.) During the 1949 Tour de France, dozens of riders switched their "suicide" levers to the then-new bar end (pass-vitesses) shifters developed by Jacques Souhart--but only for the front derailleur.  They continued to use downtube shifters--mounted on the right side of the handlebars-- for their rear derailleurs. 

 

From "Stronglight" in Flickr

That allowed the racers to continue to do all of their shifting with their right hands and would not have to switch their routine in the middle of a race.  More important, perhaps, this new arrangement allowed riders to make front shifts without interrupting their pedal strokes: a very important feature when beginning a sprint or a downhill.

"Suicide" front derailleur. From Dave Moulton's blog.

It just happened that Monsieur Souhart was Campagnolo's Paris distributor and thus had Signore Tullio's ear.  Apparently, Souhart as well as a number of racers convinced him of the bar-end shifter's superiority.  That may be the reason why the first Campagnolo Gran Sport gruppo included bar-end, but not downtube, shifters.

Interestingly, a few years later, Souhart created a front derailleur that more closely resembles modern mechanisms, in that the cage moved upward as it moved outward. (Older mechanisms, like the "suicide" derailleurs, moved straight across.)  He also made a "detented" (indexed) system of his bar-end lever to actuate the front derailleur.  Campagnolo would not adopt that new feature of his bar-end shifter, but it did incorporate his front-derailleur innovation into their lineup.

Bar-end shifters' popularity among road racers was short-lived, mainly because downtube shifters, with their shorter cables, were lighter and offered snappier, more precise shifting, especially with the kinds of derailleurs available in the 1950s.  But the fact that bar-ends allow cyclists to shift without removing their hands from the handlebars made them popular with cyclo-cross racers, who ride on rough terrain.  They also became the preferred shifters of some touring cyclists, especially after SunTour introduced its ratcheted "BarCon" and Shimano its spring-loaded levers during the 1970s.  In fact, some bikes designed for fully-loaded touring, such as Trek's original 720 (not to be confused with the later 720) came with BarCons as standard equipment, whether or not they were adorned  with SunTour derailleurs.

A Time Capsule In A Local Bike Shop

In this blog, I have often mentioned Bicycle Habitat.  It's a fine shop (well, now they're a series of shops) and I have a relationship with them that goes back decades, to the time I was working for American Youth Hostels and Habitat was around the corner.  They've remained a "go-to" source for me, and their chief mechanic and partner, Hal Ruzal, turned me on to Mercians.

I also patronize a shop in my neighborhood:  Tony's, right in the heart of the still-Greek part of Astoria.  Actually, I learned about them years ago, when I was an artist-in-residence at St. Mary's Hospital for Children and a chain snapped on my way home.

Recently, I bought a couple of things from them.  I got to talking with the owner, who is friendly and helpful.  Although he sells current-model Cannondales and Treks, he has a trove of older parts.  He probably wasn't joking when he said some of them have been there since the shop opened in the early '70's.

I spotted one such piece of equipment in his showcase:  a pair of Shimano bar-end shifters from the '70's.  "I haven't seen those in a while," I remarked.

"I can show you something else you probably haven't seen in a long time."

That was an understatement, to say the least.

I think that I've seen one other set of Simplex bar-end shifters in my life.  Certainly, I haven't seen them in four decades, or close to it.  

Most cyclists who rode bar-end shifters during the '70's and '80's chose SunTour's.  I even saw a few otherwise all-Campagnolo bikes with "Bar Cons," and with good reason:  Sun Tour's ratcheting mechanism made them much smoother and more reliable than other companies' bar-end shifters.  To this day, they are probably still the best-selling bar end shifter of all time:  Many cyclists, even some who aren't "retro-grouches," seek them out on eBay and other places.

If my own observations are indicative of wider trends, I'd say that just about everybody who didn't use SunTour's bar end shifters in those days opted for Shimano which, while not as pleasant to use as SunTour's, were still better than the ones made by other companies--including Campagnolo.

Simplex and Huret bar ends (which are often believed to have been made in the same factory) relied on friction to keep the lever in place when it wasn't being shifted.  So did Campagnolo's bar ends, as well as most other shift levers made for derailleurs.  Friction is fine on downtube shifters, but makes for balkier shifting with the extra cable length required by bar-end shifters.

Simplex, however, seemed to believe it had a solution to the problem with its demultiplicateur.  It clamps to the down tube, near the bottom bracket--in the same spot a cable guide would have been placed.  While most guides for rear derailleur cables were (and are) "tunnels" through which one cable runs continuously, the demultiplicateur was a bell crank-like device to which two lengths of cable--one forward to the shift levers, the other rearward to the derailleur--were attached to pivot points with differing radii.   This increased the mechanical advantage, which made for easier and smoother (if not necessarily more accurate) shifts.  A few constructeurs and custom builders brazed them onto their frames, most often tandems, which required cables longer than some of the rides people take.

Based on my limited experience with the demultiplicateur,  I'd say it did what it was intended to do, and did it well. It made shifting those old Simplex and Huret derailleurs (as well as Campy derailleurs that didn't have "Record" or "Gran Sport" in their names) tolerable, even with bar-end shifters.  But shops usually tried to dissuade customers from them:  For one thing, they were never easy to come by.  But, more important (at least from their point of view), they were more complicated than other cable-routing systems, which meant that mechanics hated installing them and customers balked at the extra cost (for the extra time needed) to install them.

I was tempted to make an offer on those shifters and their demultipilicateur, which were still in the packaging from nearly half a century ago.  But I encouraged Tony to list them, unless he wanted to keep them:  Someone out there is restoring a French bike and would want, if not the shifters, then at least the demultiplicateur.  Or, I'm sure, some collector would want them.

I asked Tony whether he had any Simplex downtube shifters.  (Of course, I'm thinking of the retrofriction levers.)  He doesn't think he has any, or any other vintage downtube levers, he said.  But those Simplex bar-ends were certainly a find!  Even if you're not interested in vintage bike equipment, people like Tony are fun and interesting to talk with just because they've been involved with bikes for so long. Oh, and I shared my reminisces about Greece with him.  He assured me that my itinerary was a good one for a first visit!

Merry Christmas Bike

I hope you are enjoying a holiday.

Since today is Christmas, I thought I'd share some images of the most Christmas-like object I own:

Yes, I've been doing some work on the Mercian King of Mercia I bought a few weeks ago.  For one thing, the sew-up wheels are gone:  I actually sold them on Craigslist.  In their place are a set of wheels with classic Campagnolo Record hubs with modern Mavic rims and DT spokes:

One reason I decided to use those hubs is that the rear one allowed me to employ an old trick:

The rear dropouts are spaced for 126 mm, as were most road bikes of the KoM's era (1984).  I rearranged the spacing on it so that both sides are even.  The good news is that I have a wheel with no dish.  The bad (depending on your point of view) news is that the right side spacing will allow me to use only 5-speed or Ultra (narrow)-6 freewheels---which is what I'd planned to use anyway.

And it allowed me to use the lightweight Open Pro rim.  It's actually a very strong rim for its weight, as Mavic rims tend to be.  Also, for a rim as narrow as it is, it can accommodate fairly wide tires--like the 700X32 C Paselas that adorn them now.

Probably the next most-significant change I made was in the derailleurs.  Getting a Rally derailleur was nice, but I actually like this one better:

I saw more than a few otherwise-all-Campy bikes equipped with Cyclone derailleurs from the mid-'70's to the mid-80's, so I don't feel as if I'm committing some sort of sacrilege.  With that change, I also swapped out the Campy shifters for ratcheted SunTour levers.

One more Campy part went from this bike to my parts box:  the pedals.  They don't seem to have been ridden much at all, so I wrapped them carefully and am saving them for "future reference."  The MKS platform pedals--my current favorites--bear enough resemblance to classic platform pedals like the Lyotard Berthet (#23) or the ones SR made that they don't look out of place on this bike. 

The fellow who bought the sew-up wheels also took the deep-drop Cinelli bars that came with the bike. (What such deep drops--or sew-ups--were doing on a touring bike, I'll never know.)  And I sold the stem--which had too long of an extension--on eBay.  In their place, I installed another favorite--Nitto Noodle bars with an NP (formerly Pearl) stem.  The Noodles bear enough resemblance to randonneur -style bars that I can justify (to myself, anyway) them on a bike like this.

If you saw my original post about this bike, you probably noticed three other changes:

The brake cable housings were cracked.  I like to replace cables on secondhand bikes anyway.  As luck would have it, I found these gold braided housings on eBay.

And I had to remove the leather sleeves that were stitched on to the handlebars in order to remove the brake levers.  Perhaps I will re-stitch them onto the new bars some day, but for now, I wrapped them with Tressostar brown and green cloth tape.  I also replaced the original Campagnolo gum rubber hoods, which were dried and cracks, with new items from Rustines.

Finally, I replaced the Avocet saddle with--what else?--a Brooks Professional.

This will give you a taste of things to come:

This bell bracket came from Velo Orange and will sport one of those lovely brass Japanese ringers.  And, of course, I will add bottle cages, a pump and a front rack for a bag.

Funny, isn't it, that a bike--which can be ridden all year round--can look as much like a Christmas ornament as anything that's hung on a Fraser fir.

What If He Hadn't Lost That Race?

A couple of days ago, we got a snowstorm that lived up to its advanced billing. Now it's raining, sleeting and snowing at the same time.  The way things are going, the streets will be turned from sledding runs to skating rinks.

The weather's got me to thinking about a story many of you know.   Back in 1927, a certain rider was leading a race in the Dolomites.  In those days, racers usually rode "flip-flop" rear hubs with a different-sized cog on each side.  The fellow was halfway up the notorious Croce d'Aune when he stopped to "flip" his wheel and access his lower gear.  

His fingers frozen, he couldn't loosen the wingnuts holding his wheel in place.  Supposedly, he muttered "Bisogna cambiar qualcossa de drio"--something has to change on the back of the bike--before he finally got the wheel loose.  Meantime, he lost time and his lead.

Now, I am sure this story, like most that are apocryphal, has been embellished or cleaned up, or both.  After all, any invention that changes the world (or the world of cycling, anyway) should have a good story behind it, right?

Well, that tale is widely accepted as the "creation myth", if you will, of the quick release lever.  The racer/inventor in question is, of course, one Tullio Campagnolo.

Not surprisingly, he was at work improving--you guessed it!--the wing nut before, as the folks at Classic Rendezvous so eloquently tell us, "an extremely bad winter" resulted in "Tullio's attention being shifted".

Was a pun intended with the world "shifted"? Signor Campagnolo is also noted, as we all know, for his derailleur designs.  If we can level a criticism against him, it might be that he never managed to make a really good wide-range touring derailleur that did not wholly or partially copy a Japanese design.  

The Gran Turismo is was, in the immortal words of Frank Berto, "Campy's Edsel":  utterly baroque and a functional failure. The first Rally derailleur was, essentially, a Shimano Crane GS built around a Campagnolo Record parallelogram with brass bushings.  (Some believed that Shimano was making it for Campy, but I doubt it.)  It shifted just like a Crane GS, which is to say better than any other European wide-range derailleur of the time, but not quite as well as anything SunTour was making.  

The second generation of Rally was just a Nuovo Record with a long cage.  I never used one, but from all accounts, it didn't shift as well as the first Rally. Moreover, the long cage strained the rest of the derailleur, which meant that the second-generation Rally didn't have the longevity for which Nuovo Records were renowned.  Current Campagnolo wide-range derailleurs are similar in geometry and overall design to those of Shimano.

The "Record Record", on the other hand, elongated the parallelogram in an attempt to avoid what some perceived as the fragility of long-cage derailleurs.  A parallelogram is indeed stronger than a cage, but I never had any long-cage derailleurs that failed as a result of the cage. (My experience includes several SunTour and Shimano models as well as the Huret Duopar and long-cage Jubilee and, for a brief time, a first-generation Rally.)

Here's one more interesting "What if?" component:

Before Campagnolo introduced his side-pull brake in the late 1960's, the Universal Super 51--and its later, shorter-armed iteration, the Super 68--were regarded as the best side-pull brakes.  As they were losing their share of the high-end market, Universal developed their "685", which pulled from both sides.

Supposedly, the force of the brakes squeezed rims the way a pair of vice-grips can crumple a beer can.  Also, the few who used those brakes didn't ride them for very long:  The calipers (the same material, thickness and basic design of the 68s) simply couldn't stand up to the extra torque.  But the final nail in the coffin for those brakes may have been the market:  There were very few sources for the needed "Siamesed" cables.

It's interesting to think of how bikes might be different if today's touring derailleurs and brakes were based on the designs of the "Record Record" and "685", respectively--or if Tullio Campagnolo hadn't such difficulty in loosening a pair of wing nuts during a winter race.

Extra! Extra!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

When you get to be "a certain age", you find yourself making reference to something everyone in your generation understands--whether it's some bit of pop or haute culture, technology or something that was in the news--and young people have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about.

It happens all the time when I teach.  I am thinking now about the time I mentioned Hunter Thompson, just after his suicide.  Although he was hardly forgotten, at least to folks of my generation, my students hadn't grown up reading is articles (mainly in Rolling Stone--yes, we actually thought it was halfway relevant, for a time!) and books.  Explaining him, of course, led to explaining other things my students had heard, but didn't know about, like Watergate and why so many of us thought Richard Nixon was evil incarnate.  (Before he turned into a parody of himself, Garry Wills brilliantly showed how Tricky Dick was a tragically ambitious character who would have fit into Paradise Lost or Macbeth.)  Although I went off the day's ostensible topic--I forget what it was--the discussion proved fruitful for some of the works students read that semester.

Anyway, another time I had to lead my students out of the wilderness, so to speak, was when I said "Extra! Extra!" Since most young people don't read print newspapers, they aren't familiar with many of the tropes of that medium.  Then again, I'm not sure that any newspaper has used "Extra! Extra!" in its banner--or that any hawker has shouted "Read All About It!" in a few decades!

I must say, though, that I am suspicious whenever any bicycle component has "extra" his name.  Perhaps my prejudice stems from the Regina Extra freewheel that turned into a block of six fixed gears during a ride.   In fact, many of Regina's other products--all of which, in my experience, were overrated--had "Extra" in their name.  So did the Campagnolo Valentino Extra, a derailleur introduced about a decade too late.  When it came out, a SunTour or Shimano derailleur that shifted much better could be had for about half the cost of a Campy VE.

Speaking of derailleurs with "Extra" in their name, check this out:

If you are North American--or, in fact, from anyplace besides Europe--you've probably never seen it.  I have seen only one of those derailleurs in person--in Italy about 30 years ago.  For that matter, if you're not in the Euro zone, you've probably never seen anything else made by the company that made that derailleur.

When you think of Spanish bikes and components today, you probably think of Orbea.  If you are my age, you might remember (or perhaps even rode) equipment from Zeus, which made clones of popular European parts like Stronglight and Specialites TA cranks, Weinmann and Mafac brakes--and, of course, Campagnolo derailleurs.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s, they made their "2000" line of components, which include their iconic black-and-gold anodized derailleurs and the hourglass-shaped hubs that would be imitated by other hub-makers.

Zeus was based in Eibar, in the Basque region.  In that same town, another component manufacturer turned out cruder versions of what Zeus made--and the derailleur you see in the photo.  And its name sounds more like a type of luxury condominium than that of any enterprise in the bicycle industry.

Officially, that company was called Industrias Baskaran. But it was better known as Triplex.  Why that name was chosen, I don't know.   It's about as un-Basque (or -Spanish, for that matter) as any name can be.  Then again, the Basque language is completely unrelated to any other in the world.

Although they produced a full range of components and accessories (including water bottles and cages that, not surprisingly, copied Specialites TA and REG designs), Triplex is best known--for better and worse--for its derailleurs.  As far as I know, no American, British or Japanese bike was ever equipped with them.  A number of Spanish and French bikes, however, were adorned with them. 

The reason is fairly obvious.  Take away the screaming red "Extra" emblem and the derailleur looks like--a Campagnolo Sport, at least from a couple of meters (remember, we're talking about European bikes) away.  Other Triplex derailleurs bore an even closer resemblance to Campagnolo's iconic derailleurs, which spawned any number of imitators.

Disraeligears, Classic Rendezvous and VeloBase are among the few sources of information available for Triplex, which seems to have stopped making bike parts some time around 2005.   They have become "Distriplex" (hmm....), an importer and distrubutor of components. Its website is available only in Spanish and French, but its "Nouveautes" (new products) page contains some Latin gibberish!

Then again, more people outside Eibar would understand it than would understand anything in Basque!  And more people would recognize something that looks like a Campy derailleur than something emblazoned with "Extra! Extra!  Read All About It!"

Campagnolo's Coelacanth

The first time I saw this, I thought I was looking at the bike of someone whose dollars spent exceeded the number of miles ridden on his bike.  I mean, who else would have a Campagnolo quick-release lever in that position?

A second glance revealed, of course, that it wasn't a quick-release lever.  But could that be...a coaster brake hub?...I wondered.  

I thought I knew Campy stuff pretty well. Even though I never rode BMX, I knew the legendary Italian company made some of the best components available for that kind of riding. I also remember their short-lived mountain bike lineup (Euclid).  I even recalled  that they made parts for aircraft and NASA spacecraft as well as race cars and motorcycles.  And, oh, yes, let's not forget those big corkscrews--the gold plated ones, especially.

It's yoooge.  I mean, BIG.

Still, I had not heard of a Campagnolo coaster brake hub until I saw a photo of it a few years ago.  I have since seen a few more images of it, and a few brief mentions.  I have not, however, found any Campagnolo catalogue or other literature that listed it, or any other information pertaining to it.  When was it made?  Why did Campy begin and cease production of it?  Was its reputation on par with its Super Record racing components?  Or was it like their Delta brake:  a triumph of technology and aesthetics over function?  

Even though the Bike Boom--which made ten-speeds all the rage--exploded during my adolescence, lots of kids still rode bike with coaster brakes.  Even though balloon-tired bikes were falling out of favor with kids my age and adults, lots of kids still looked forward to getting middleweight bikes like the Schwinn Typhoon or Hollywood, which came with coaster brakes.  Even the low-rider "muscle" bikes like Schwinn's Sting Ray were available with coaster brakes as well as with five-speed derailleurs.

Can you imagine kids on some playground trying to one-up each other? "Well, I got a Schwinn!"  "Oh, yeah.  Well, mine has a Campagnolo coaster brake."  What kind of a world would we have?  Hmm...what would the world be like if kids who weren't Italian grew up knowing how to pronounce "Campagnolo"?

From what little I've seen of them, I'd guess that the Campagnolo coaster brake hubs were well-made.  Still, if I were going to build a coaster brake wheel for myself, my first choice would be a US-made Bendix.  I overhauled and fixed enough coaster brakes when I worked in bike shops to see how much better they were than the others, including New Departure or even Sachs-Fichtel or Sturmey-Archer.  Bendix haven't been made in the 'States for about forty years (later ones were made in Mexico), but if you're nice to your bike mechanic, he or she might give you one (or sell it for not very much) out of the parts bin:  Lots of Bendix hubs have been saved from wheels that were otherwise trashed. Still, I've seen them sell for over $100 on eBay!

A few years ago, I briefly rode a Velosteel coaster brake hub.  It's certainly prettier than any other I've seen, even Campy's.   Its beauty is only skin- (or shell- ) deep, though:  Whenever I backpedaled to stop the bike, it seemed that the hub had to find its "sweet spot" before the brake engaged, and when I pedaled again after stopping, I experienced a "dead" stroke of about half a pedal revolution.

If you want a currently-made coaster brake hub, I'd say to buy Shimano's--even though it doesn't have the "cool" factor of Campagnolo's.  Actually, half of the "cool" factor would come from simply finding a Campagnolo coaster brake hub in the first place!