In Living Color

Black-anodized components, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, have waxed and waned in popularity during (and before) the four decades I’ve been a cyclist. I hope I did not convey the impression that all components were black or silver.  At various times during my years on two wheels—and throughout the history of cycling—bike parts have been anodized in a spectrum of colors. 

Today, most of the parts available in a rainbow of hues are intended for fixed gear or single speed bikes.  While cranks, chainrings, pedals, cogs and even chains are available the Roy G. Biv range for bikes designed for the velodrome or urban hipsters.  But cranksets with more than one chainring, derailleurs, brakes and other parts made for road, touring or mountain bikes are usually made in either silver or black, with the latter shade becoming more dominant as carbon-fiber bikes gain popularity.  One of the few notable exceptions to the hegemony (or tyranny, depending on how you look at it) of silver and black in road and off-road bike parts is Velocity rims.

Weinmann Vainqueur 999 brakes.  Red and blue were offered only from 1961 to 1964.

However, in decades past, parts for road, touring and sport bikes have been finished in other colors, red and blue being the most common.  Weinmann and Mafac made their center-pull brakes in those colors for brief periods during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.  Mafac, in their last years (the early 1980’s), also made their cantilever brakes in a variety of colors.

Modolo Professional brake, circa 1983.  And you thought white components were sooo 2009?

Ofmega Maglia Rosa rear derailleur.  You can't make this stuff up!

The component makers that became most noted for their color palettes were Italian and offered the greatest variety during from the late 1970’s until the mid 1980’s.  Perhaps the most prominent of them were Modolo and Ofmega.  The former finished their “Professional” brakes—found on otherwise all-Campagnolo bikes—in red, blue, green, gold and white, as well as the traditional black or silver.  The latter company finished their derailleurs, which were essentially Campagnolo Records rendered in plastic, in the rosa hue of the Giro d’Italia leader’s jersey as well as the jaune of its Tour de France counterpart, and just about every other color imaginable.

Colnago C60 with 24 karat gold-plated Campagnolo parts

Other companies did not offer such a wide range of tones but nonetheless parted, at least to one degree or another, from the silver/black binary.  I have ridden gold-anodized Mafac 2002 and Galli brakes; Zeus, Sugino and SunTour also made derailleurs, cranksets and other parts with gold anodizing.  Of course, if really wanted bling, you went for the gold-plated (24 karat) parts Campagnolo briefly made before the price of the precious metal skyrocketed around 1980.

Galli rear derailleur in "midnight blue"

In addition to gold, Galli offered one of the most distinctive finishes in the history of bicycle componentry:  “midnight blue”.  It was, of course, darker than most other blue parts but was more complex and richer than navy or black.  In addition to brakes, derailleurs, cranksets, hubs and other traditional “gruppo” parts, Galli offered rims (made for them by FIR) and retrofriction shift levers (manufactured by Simplex) in midnight blue.  Galli were even finishing 3TTT stems, bars and seatposts in their trademark finish.  Such an ensemble looked absolutely fabulous on a white Olmo of that period, but it also looked great on celeste Bianchis and just about any silver bike.

Kooka crank, circa 1992

Probably the last time components made for bikes with more than one gear or to be ridden by anyone besides Keirin racers or hipsters was the early- to mid-1990’s, when it seemed that every twenty-something in California whose father had a lathe in his garage was making parts, mainly for mountain bikes, that were lighter and more expensive than everything else on the market.  Kooka and Topline crankset, which I mentioned in an earlier post, are examples of that genre.  Interestingly, survivors of that time, like Paul Components and White Industries, are now making their (admittedly fine) stuff in silver and black.  Chris King may be the only exception:  His headsets, hubs and other parts are finished in even more colors than they were two decades ago.

These days, all of my bike components are black or silver.  Part of the reason is that most of the stuff I use is available only in those colors.  But another is that I don’t want parts that detract from the kinds of finishes I like on my frames.

Crankin' Up The Insanity

Back in the good ol' days--the '90's--it seemed as if every twenty-something dude in California whose father had a lathe in his garage was making bike parts. Most of them were intended for mountain bikes, but a few were made for road and fixed-gear bikes, which were just in the process of being discovered by the hipster-equivalents of that time.

A few, like Chris King and the makers of Paul components, still make superb, if pricey, stuff.  However, a number of would-be challengers to Shimano (and, later, SRAM) fell by the wayside--some deservedly so.  It seems that some of the more notable and spectacular casualties are those who tried to make the lightest cranksets they could.

One such misguided attempt was the original Kooka crank.  Back in my off-road riding days, I knew a number of riders who rode--and broke--them.  But, hey, they were the hippest and lightest things available.  And they were available in all sorts of color combinations, including some that were conceived by folks who smoked things not made by RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris:

and some of them weren't even Rastafarians:

(My dear Bob Marley, I mean no disrespect to you or any other Rasta!)

These cranks had an alarming habit of breaking on where the spider attached to it, or around the square axle mounts or the holes into which pedals are installed.  The latter makes sense, as those are the weaker areas of the cranks.  But the for a spider to separate from an arm means that--well, it wasn't attached very firmly in the first place.  In the case of those early Kooka cranks, only a set screw held them together.

I mean, it had been known for much of the history of cycling that a crankset is stiffer and stronger when the spider arms are integral with the drive-side crank arms.  On the best cranks, they are cold-forged; on less-expensive but still-serviceable cranks, they are melt-forged.  On still less expensive cranks the spider is swaged (pressed) to the arm.  Still, I know of many people who rode the latter kind of crank, as I did, for many miles without any problems.

But, oddly enough (Well, was anything really odd when it came to these cranks?), axle-mount failures usually came on the non-drive side, where there is supposed to be less stress.  The reason, it seems, is that the spider was actually designed to reinforce the drive-side arm, which was otherwise identical to the non-drive-side arm.

Even though I would have loved to get the "ultra violet" finish, I had my doubts about their strength even before some of my old riding buddies trashed theirs.  I'm glad I listened to those misgivings.

Kooka later redesigned their cranks in a more traditional way, but the damage to their reputation was done.

Another example of how, in spite of what Robert Browning wrote in Andrea del Sarto, less is not always more, can be found in the Topline cranks of that era.  To be fair, the few people I knew who rode them on the road had no problems with them.  But some off-roaders had failures similar to those on the Kooka cranks--though, again to be fair, they weren't just riding the local trails.  

Like Kookas, Toplines were redesigned after a few years and became part of the Cook (no, not Koch) Brothers' line of components. That is probably what kept them in the marketplace, as CB had by that time established a reputation for sound, reliable design.

 Oh, but I love that purple.  I really do.  But not enough to pay $350 on eBay.  Believe it or not, people are actually paying even more for the original Kookas!