Another Forerunner To A Shimano "Innovation"

For today's post, I'm going to engage in a bit of bike geekery, as I did in yesterday's post.  Fear not:  This will not be a regular feature of Midlife Cycling.  At least, I don't intend it to be.

As I did in yesterday's post, I'm going to write about a long-forgotten component that featured a design used in later, more successful (at least commercially) bike parts.

From the 1920's until the 1970's, many British bikes featured Williams cranks, chanrings and bottom brackets.  That is not surprising when you consider that those parts were, like the bikes, made in England.  

As Steve Griffiths notes in "Classic Lightweights," Williams has been unfairly judged on the basis of its lowest-quality--and, unfortunately, most commonly-used--model, the C34.  It was a cottered steel crankset, and the arms (or spider) onto which the chainrings mounted was swaged (forced).  Willliams also make much nicer models,including some of those thin,elegant cranks you see on British bikes from the 1960's and earlier.  

But their best crankset--and the only cotterless crankset made in any significant quantity in England--was the AB 77. I have seen one of them in my entire life: on a Claud Butler that came into the first shop in which I worked.  

The AB77 was actually quite nice:  the quality of the materials, machining and finish were high.  It had the same chainring design as the TA Cyclotouriste, Stronglight 49D and the Nervar crank that aped them.  That meant the AB77, like those other cranks, could be set up as a road double with a 42 tooth small chainring  or as a triple with a 26-tooth inner ring.  

But the most interesting part of the AB77 was its bottom bracket.  Presaging a trend by two decades, its axle had a splined rather than square end.  In other words, it was a proto-Octalink or ISIS bottom bracket.  

Unfortunately, that bottom bracket was its fatal flaw.  During the period when the AB77 was produced (1962-mid 1970's), only one other crank had such a design.  It was made by Gnutti in Italy and its splines were of a different pattern from Williams', so the two could not be interchanged.  That was especially unfortunate for Williams, because the bottom bracket, which was made by T.D.C. (once a major manufacturer or headsets and freewheels), didn't last very long. 

When Shimano decided to resurrect this long-forgotten idea during the 1990's, it made the splines broader, which was supposed to increase the stiffness as well as the lifespan of the bottom bracket.  However, they, like their TDC/Williams predecessor, wore out quickly.  The problem with the Shimano splined brackets--and the similar, though not interchangeable, ISIS-pattern bottom brackets made by other companies--had narrower axles and smaller bearings than their square-ended counterparts.  Interestingly, Shimano's Octalink and other companies' ISIS bottom brackets had an even shorter run--not much more than half a decade--than the ones from TDC/Williams.  

A few years after Williams ceased production of the AB77, they were taken over by Nicklin,one of their former competitors, which offered only the C34 and a couple of other low-priced models that were fitted to mass-market bikes from Raleigh, Dawes and other manufacturers.  As production of such bikes ended, so did most of the British cycle-component industry, including Nicklin/Williams.  

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.

The States Of Bicycle Commuting

How many people commute on bicycles in your state?  And, how does your state compare to others in that category?

If you're dying to know the answers to such questions, check this out:


Click image to open interactive version (via BikeGuard).

This interactive graphic comes from a page hosted by  My Asset Tag.(It also hosts Bike Guard.)


Which state would you expect to have the highest percentage of its population commuting by bike?  Oregon?  Wisconsin?  Massachusetts?  Washington?

If you picked "Washington," your answer is incomplete.  Think of the other part:  D.C.  Yes, the District of Columbia has the highest proportion of bike commuters.

Not surprisingly, most of the low-ranked states are in the South (e.g., Louisiana, Mississippi and Kentucky).  It's also no surprise that Oregon ranks second.  However, I didn't expect to see Alaska in third place---or my home state, New York, squarely in the middle at #25.  Then again, there are vast areas of upstate where people don't ride much at all.  

Where does your state stand?

Lance And Oprah

This morning, while doing my stretches and getting dressed for work, I was listening to the news.

I heard what I'm sure you've all heard by now:  Lance Armstrong, in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, has admitted to using banned substances.

To me, it's interesting that Winfrey said he "did not come clean in the manner I expected".  Of course, I won't know what she meant by that until I see the interview.  She said he "was ready" and "met the moment."

Now, I have to wonder what made him "ready" for a "confession".  And why did it take an interview with Oprah for him to "come clean".

While I am willing--however reluctantly--to believe his confession and guilt, I find it interesting, to say the least, that it's taken so long for anyone to establish his guilt. It seems that athletes in other sports--baseball in particular-- who were using banned substances were found out more quickly than Lance was.   

On the other hand, I don't think I have to wonder why there was so much more pressure on him to confess than there has been for other cyclists.  The first five-time winner of the Tour De France, Jacques Anquetil, once said something to the effect that nobody ever won the Tour on salad and mineral water.  

Other cyclists have admitted that doping was rampant in the sport.  But, none of them won the Tour seven times.  And none of them was American.   What's more, none of them did it the way Lance did it: He concentrated on winning the tour to the exclusion of many other races, including classics like Paris-Nice.  That is in marked contrast to riders like Eddy Mercx and Bernard Hinault who, between them, won about 400 more races than Armstrong did.

Plus, he managed to rankle other cyclists, including his teammates, in ways that no other winner did.  To be sure, they all provoked envy among the riders they defeated, and the ones who served as domestiques on their teams.  But, as fiercely competitive as they were on their bikes, they were gentlemen off their bikes.  Armstrong, from what I've heard and read, was cocky and often arrogant.  Now, I'm not saying that's a good reason to accuse him or to get him to confess.  But I think that other cyclists, as well as the sport's officials, wanted to see him brought down in ways they never wanted to see their old heroes dethroned.

Whatever their motives for bringing Lance to "justice", and whatever his motives for confessing, this is still a very sad time for the sport.  After all, he is one of the few larger-than-life personalities the sport has produced.  Other cyclists, like the ones I've mentioned and Miguel Indurain, were lionized for their athletic prowess.  But even Indurain himself admitted he wasn't much of a story when he wasn't pedaling.  As he once told a journalist, "My hobby is sleeping." 


I believe that the sport will continue even after Lance has been, in effect, excommunicated from it.  But it won't be the same.    About the only person who will benefit, I think, is Oprah.  To be exact, her network will benefit. After all, some people will look for it on their cable boxes for the first time.  

Just Another Beautiful Bike Photo

Trust me:  I have absolutely no intention of encroaching on the wonderful work the author of Cycling Art Blog does.

However, I'll admit that this post is just an excuse to post another lovely bicycle (another great blog I'm not trying to usurp) photo I found on the internet.

I couldn't find any credits for it. If it's yours, let  me know and you'll be duly acknowledged.