While I was riding yesterday afternoon, this bike caught my eye:
If you've been following this blog, you know my favorite color is purple, followed by certain shades of green and certain shades of blue. Well, that bike is one of those certain shades of green. But somehow I knew it wasn't the only reason to look at it.
Clarks of Harrow. Hmm, I've never seen that name on a bike before. Obviously, it wasn't made by them. But a close-up look provided me with some possible clues:
The lamp bracket on the front fork is almost a dead-giveaway that the bike was made in Great Britain for the British market. Another clue to the English nature is this:
Flat-plate wraparound seat stay caps were used almost exclusively by bike makers in Blighty. After establishing with near-certainty that it is indeed a British bike, I wondered who might have built it.
One possible clue lies here:
The lug, while fairly simple, seems to have been scalloped to a point in the manner of another English maker:
This 1966 Witcomb L'Avenir shows a lug style it often used during the 1960's and '70's. Then again, so did a number of other British builders, including Holdsworth and Claud Butler. I don't think Mercian ever used such a lug shape, and I simply can't imagine Hetchins having employed it.
In brief, it was a pretty nice bike that caught my eye. About the only components that looked original were the seatpost (I couldn't see an identifying mark) and Campagnolo steel headset. The rest of the parts included a Velo Orange crankset, new Dia Compe 610 brakes, Shimano Tiagra derailleurs and Tiagra hubs laced to Sun M-13 rims and shod with Continental Gatorskin tires.
I've found a derailleur that not even Michael Sweatman, the author of Disraeligears, has. At least it's not in the "A Riot of Colour" section of his website.
If I'd found the derailleur in the photo about fifteen years ago--when they were, most likely, last made--I might've installed it on my Voodoo Wazoo. After all, that bike was orange and had a few green parts!
The Sachs D.I.R.T. derailleur series was, as its name indicates, intended for mountain bikes. During the early 1980's, Sachs--a German company known mainly for its coaster brake- and internally geared-hubs--bought French derailleur maker Huret, along with Maillard, a Gallic concern that manufactured hubs (including the well-conceived but poorly-executed Helicomatic), freewheels, pedals and other components, sometimes under the "Normandy" and "Atom" brands. Later in the decade, Sachs was absorbed into SRAM but continued to make its derailleurs in France under their own name.
The D.I.R.T. series, along with the company's Quartz and Success road changers, were among the last derailleurs produced on French soil. (According to Frank Berto in The Dancing Chain, the Mavic Mektronic was probably the last.) They, and other Sachs derailleurs, were actually well-designed and -made. But Sachs never developed an integrated drive train group and thus never competed with the Shimano juggernaut.
Now that I think of it, the derailleur in the photos wouldn't look bad on the bike I wrote about yesterday!
Back when I was racing, I, like many of my peers in the peloton (and other cyclists who had racing fantasies) judged bikes and components mainly on one trait: stiffness.
This was especially true of frames and, specifically, the rear triangle. Any flexing, we thought, wasted our energies and robbed us of precious seconds.
Of course, a bike that rides like a jackhammer can subvert one's ambitions just as much as a "wet noodle". After all, if you're getting bounced around, all of that vibration can wear on you, no matter how tightly-put together you are.
I was thinking about that when I came across a bike none of us would have gotten anywhere near:
A completely-bendable frame. It makes me think of a joke I heard about an all-rubber suspension bridge. If nothing else, the bike solves the problem of how to lock up both wheels when you're parked in a high-theft area.
The frame flops loose with the flick of a lever. I wonder whether there's any way to accidentally jar the lever while riding. I take that back: If I were riding the bike, I don't think I'd want to find out!
The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.
So are we warned in Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians.
A thief in the night is certainly cause for worry. After all, I'm sure I'm not the only cyclists who's lost his or her steed to one. I've also lost parts on bikes I've parked overnight in the path of some random crook.
As poignant as Paul's metaphor is, I have to wonder what he'd have said about another nocturnal perp.
The guy, who was caught on video, was walking around the Times Square area with a bag of feces. (Back in the day, shadowy characters prowled the area with bags full of other things, some of which they sold to passerby!) In the wee hours of one morning last week, he smeared the contents of his sack over the seats of Citibikes parked in the dock across the street from the Al Hirschfeld theatre, where "Kinky Boots" has been playing.
Worst of all, some people actually took the bikes without checking the seats.
This incident gives new meaning to the decals that have been applied to some of the city's rental bikes:
When I heard about the perp, who hasn't been caught, I imagined a(n) (over)zealous police officer stopping him and ordering him to open the contents of his bag!
These days, shift levers are curved pieces of metal with cylinders at one end. The shapes vary somewhat, and the ones attached to brake levers (e.g., Campagnolo Ergo and Shimano STI) are longer. But, for the most part, they don't call attention to themselves.
Probably the most elegant shifters ever made were the "teardrop" retrofriction levers Simplex made during the 1970's and '80's:
Next in my beauty contest are the Superbe Pro levers SunTour produced during the 1980's"
Some might say they look even better with the gum-rubber hoods SunTour offered for a time:
I'd probably want those hoods if I were going to install the levers on Vera, my British Racing Green Miss Mercian.
Campagnolo Record levers of that era also had a fairly understated design:
unless some bike maker decided to re-fashion them:
Now, some would argue that an Olmo of that era simply wouldn't be an Olmo without those shifters. I wouldn't disagree, though I've never owned an Olmo.
I've never owned a Schwinn Sting-Ray, either. That's probably a good thing, considering the shifter that came with it:
I can't help but to wonder whether it has something to do with the decline in birth rates. Supposedly, the shifter "clicked" or "indexed". It's hard to imagine how that was accomplished with the derailleur that came with the bike: a Schwinn-branded ("Schwinn Approved") Huret Allvit.
In a way, though, I can understand why that shifter was used on Sting-Rays: the bike's designer was invoking the spirit (or something) of "muscle cars" from that time. I guess some kid could push or pull that lever and imagine himself on the track at Daytona or something.
But there's no such excuse for this lever, which was made for adult bikes:
If you think somebody cannibalized a Simplex "Prestige" derailleur and glued parts of it to the tops of these lever, you'd be right--sort of. After all, these levers were made by Simplex around the same time they were making all-plastic derailleurs.
And then there are these levers that dare not speak their name:
The "333" on the sticker means that Shimano made them, probably during the 1960's or early 1970's. SunTour's components were sub-branded "888". How these companies came up with those numerical designations, I don't know.
One way you can tell it's from that period is the red adjuster knobs and trim. Both Shimano and SunTour--as well as a couple of other less well-known Japanese manufacturers--made derailleurs and other components with red trim or even small parts. That practice seems to have lasted only a few years, and no one seems to know what inspired it. The "rising sun" of the Japanese flag, perhaps.
I wonder whether it will work with Campagnolo cassettes. ;-)
