Pivotal Brakes

Sometimes, when I surf the web, I am swept into a stream of flotsam from bikes past.

Here is an example of what I mean:

Photo by berangberang

If you ride road bikes, something about this brake may seem familiar to you.  And well it should.

It was made by Altenberger in the German Federal Republic (West Germany to us Americans) during the 1970's.  I started working in bike shops during that time, and some bikes--mainly lower-priced ones with upright handlebars--came with that brake.

It's the ancestor of brakes found on nearly every road bike built since the mid-1990's.  Why?  Take a look at those bolts with the red nylon washers.  They make it a dual-pivot brake.  While they may not have been the original of the genre, they were the first dual-pivots to appear on any significant numbers of bikes.

They were supposed to provide the simplicity and light weight of sidepulls but the "symmetry" and modulation of centerpulls.  Unfortunately, Altenberger's brake didn't exhibit any of those qualities.  I think that it had to do with the fact that the arm with the cable anchor bolt usually overlapped the pivot on the other arm, as you see in the photo.  That eliminated whatever "symmetry" the brake may have been designed to have, and made for very uneven braking.

Perhaps even more to the point, the brake was not of very good quality.  The metal used in the arms was pretty flexy. (The fact that the arms were long didn't help matters.)  The rather flimsy spring would lose its springiness fairly quickly, which further diminished the brake's power and modulation.

After Altenberger stopped making this brake (or went out of business altogether:  I don't recall seeing very many of the company's brakes after the early '80's or so), Weinmann produced a similar model, which they called the "Synchron".  Its quality and aesthetics were better than those of the Altenberger, but, like its predecessor, the Synchron never synchronized very well and got worse over time.

So, when Shimano came out with their own version of the dual-pivot brakes, I cringed.  Younger cyclists didn't have memories of the earlier dual-pivot brakes, so they were enthusiastic about this new "innovation".  I refrained from them for a few years until someone with whom I shared, at that time, a similar riding style and whose ideas I respected convinced me to try a pair of the Shimano 600/Ultegra dual-pivots.  Although I was, at first, put off by their gray epoxy finish as I was by the fact they were dual-pivots, I became a convert.  Shimano figured out how to actually make the arms work in harmony and used better quality materials than the ones found in the Altenberger or Synchron.  Even the lower-priced Tektros, not to mention the higher-end Mavic and Campagnolo Record and Chorus 

dual-pivot brakes, are worlds better than those early attempts to combine the advantages and eliminate the weaknesses of center- and side-pull brakes found on ten-speeds of the 1970's and earlier.

Velosteel: My First Coaster Brake In 40 Years

Now I'm going to tell you a little more about the wheel I was building--and Marley was "inspecting."

As you may be able to see, the appendage hanging from the hub is a coaster-brake arm.  (That's the kind of brake you backpedal.)  The wheel I built with it is going on the rescued Trek frame. 

I don't know what possessed me to go and buy the hub--one of two new parts I've bought for the bike--or to decide that it was going on the Trek frame.  After all, I haven't owned a bike with a coaster brake in about 40 years.

At least I know that I will end up with a very simple bike.  In fact, the only way I could make the bike simpler would be to use a fixed-gear wheel in the rear--without brakes, of course.  I had such a bike in my youth, and rode it on the streets.  There's no way I'll do that now!

Anyway, the hub is a Czech-made Velosteel.  From what I understand, the owners of Velosteel purchased the machinery used to produce the classic German Fichtel-Sachs coaster brake hub before SRAM bought out Sachs.  

Three things are immediately noticeable about the Velosteel hub:  the weight (definitely more than a Shimano coaster-brake hub), the shape and structure of the shell, the lush chroming and the way the cog is attached.  

On most coaster brake and internally-geared hubs, the cog is splined, slides onto the hub body and is held in place with a snap ring.   In contrast, the cog screws onto this hub in the same way as a track (fixed-gear) cog.  Another feature this hub has in common with a track hub is the reverse-threaded lockring.  In other words, the cog screws on one way (clockwise) but there is a second set of threads on which the lockring attaches counterclockwise.  This prevents the cog from unscrewing when you backpedal or do a "track stand".  

And, yes, you can use track cogs and lockrings--as long as they're not Campagnolo or Phil Wood. 

While looking at the above photo, I'm thinking of the very first fixed-gear bike I ever had:  a converted Peugeot UO8.  In those days, very few people (at least here in the US) were riding "fixies," and I couldn't find any instructions on how to do such a conversion in any of the books or magazines I owned or borrowed. (Remember, we didn't have the Internet in those days!)  So, I screwed a track cog onto the Normandy hub that came with the bike and tightened a bottom-bracket lockring as hard as I could against the cog.  

I got away with riding it for about a year before I did an unintentional "track stand" while stopping for a light.  Whomp!  I just-as-unintentionally found myself spread over the frame's top tube after the cog unscrewed and my legs imitated those of a collapsible table!

But I digress.  The Velosteel cogs and lockring look to be well-machined, if not as nicely finished as the hub.  Another interesting feature of the hub body is that it's cast as one piece, as the better road and track hubs are.  Most other coaster-brake hubs have flanges that are pressed onto the hub shell.   I once had a rear hub (non-coaster brake) with pressed-on flanges that collapsed into each other.  While this may have been an unusual occurence, I've never heard of such a thing happening to hubs with one-piece shells.  

And one-piece construction makes for a more elegant shape, and allows the nice chrome finishing you see on the Velosteel. 

I built the hub onto a Mavic rim that had previously been laced to another hub and sat in my closet for I-don't-know-how-long.   It has the older grey "hard anodized" finish which, to my knowledge, Mavic no longer uses.  So I had no "mate" to this rim, which is one of the reasons it's been entombed in my closet for so long.

To mate the Mavic rim to the Velosteel hub, I used Phil Wood spokes.  Guy Doss of Elegant Wheels--from whom I bought the hub as well as the spokes--recommends Phils for the Velosteel hub because, like other steel hubs, it has thinner flanges than alloy hubs, so spokes designed for alloy hubs (such as DT and Wheelsmith) won't fit as well.   If you build a steel hub (whether Velosteel, Shimano or an old Sturmey-Archer, SunTour or Sachs three-speed hub) with one of those brands of spokes, you should use spoke washers under the spoke heads.


In time, I'll find out how the hub works and lasts.  For now, I like the look of the wheel and it seems to fit nicely into the old Trek frame.

By the way:  I highly recommend Guy Doss.  He's very helpful and personable, and can also build you a wheel from  a Velosteel hub if you've neither the skills nor the inclination to do it yourself.

N.B.--Apparently, Velosteel offers a coaster-brake hub with a cog that slides on and is held in place with snap ring:  the same configuration most other coaster-brake hubs, and most traditional internally-geared hubs, use.  However, I don't know whether Velosteel's slide-on cogs and snaprings are interchangeable with those of other brands.  At least the "track" configuration I bought can use cogs and lockrings from a number of other manufacturers.

 

 

I Can Out-Retro Any Kid On The Block!

Take a look at this rim decal on an Electra touring bicycle:

Now look at this Mavic decal from the 1960's:

Don't get me wrong:  I prefer the graphics on many older bikes and components to their modern counterparts. (The fact that I ride four lugged Reynolds Mercians and buy stuff from Velo Orange should tell you something!) But I have to wonder about the impulse to create "genuine reproductions." 

I'm not trying to slam Electra:  I like a lot of what they displayed at the New Amsterdam Bike Show.  In fact, if I were in the market for a touring bike and didn't have my Mercians, I might well consider buying what Electra is offering.
  


For another example of something that seems as if its makers are trying to out-retro every other kid  on the block, take a look at this fork decal:

Compare it with these Reynolds fork decals from the 1980's:

As I said, I like much of what Electra is doing and wish them well. I just hope they don't get embroiled in some silly dispute with another company over who has the rights to copy some design that hadn't been in production for decades.


Now, for something that was decidedly not retro at the show, I offer this:

The show was sponsored by KLM and, not surprisingly, Grolsch beer was served.  All attendees who were of legal drinking age were offered two glasses "on the house."

Being Avant-Garde, After A Fashion

As some of you might recall, a couple of weeks ago I sold a few things after doing some very late "spring cleaning."  Thanks to a posting on this blog (which I've since removed) and an announcement on a discussion group, I was able to sell my stuff without going to the dreaded Craig's List or,egad, eBay.


However, I did scroll through listings on both of those sites.  On eBay, I saw a couple of things that appeal mainly to people with more money than miles on their bikes.

You simply have to get a pair of wheels to match your Louis Vuitton purse--or, better yet, your LV custom saddlebag and handlebar wrap:

I can almost see some Japanese tourist in Paris, circa 1985, with these wheels.  


The person selling them claimed that they came with a bike he bought and they  weren't his style.  Apart from the graphics on the rims, I thought the spoke patterns and colors were also wild:  black radials on the front, alternating red and white, laced two cross, on the rear.    I'd like to see the bike that came with these wheels.


The cyclist in me wonders why the rear hub is a Phil Wood but the front is a Formula. I ride three pairs of wheels with Phils and one pair with Formula.  While I can't think of a better hub than Phil's, I think that Formula is a great hub for the money.  But--perhaps this isn't apparent in the photos--the style of each of them is very different and I wonder why someone who was apparently trying to coordinate everything visually would so mix the hubs.  As a practical matter, the mix actually makes some sense:  The quality of the rear is more critical than that of the front, and whoever built those wheels saved a bit of money on the front.


As you may have guessed, the rims were made by Velocity.  I wonder whether it's some sort of special edition, and for how long they will be made.  After all, I have to get a pair and build them when I have some money! ;-)


To be fair, Velocity is the only brand of rim besides Mavic I would use on a pair of wheels I were building, or having built--unless, of course, I were building in a size not made by either of those two companies.  Sun rims, I've found, are strong and are usually good values for the money. But they are considerably more difficult to build and true than Mavic or Velocity rims.


They should paint this next item to coordinate with the wheels:

After all, if you're going to get aerodynamic rims, you need an aerodynamic bell to go with it, n'est-ce pas?  And not any old aerodynamic bell:  It absolutely must be titanium, like this one.  A couple of years ago, I would've said that titanium is, like, soooo 1996. But, as I understand, this year stuff from the fin de siecle is going to be all hip and retro.  But just in case you're a year too early, remember to get the bell painted white and stenciled with Monsieur Louis' "V's."