Everything Clamp-on

The pictures here are of a 1968 Pugliaghi. Everything clamp on even the bottom bracket gear cable guides. Pictures from TheRacingBicycle.com

In the late 1950s through the early 1970s there was a slump in bicycle sales in Europe. In the 1960s the economy was booming and although in many places the bicycle had always been the mode of transport for the working classes; many were now buying cars for the first time. At the same time the fitness craze of the 1970s had not yet begun.

Racing bicycles and framebuilders were also hit by this slump and the price of a frame rose very little in that decade even though inflation did. Framebuilders had to look for ways to cut costs and one of them was to leave off all braze-ons.

Building a frame without braze-ons does save a considerable amount of time and therefore labor costs. The only braze-ons seen in this era was a chainstay stop and sometimes a little stop under the down tube to prevent the gear lever clamp from sliding down the tube. 

Having done that framebuilders could not tell their customers they were doing this to cut costs, hence the story that braze-ons weaken the frame. I think Cinelli started it; framebuilding was never their main source of income (Handlebars and stems were.) so the price of a Cinelli frame was always high. Everyone’s thinking was if Cinelli can get away with it so can we, and most framebuilders followed suit.

Do braze-ons weaken the frame? Maybe very marginally but it is part of the framebuilding process. I have seen down tubes break right at the clamp on gear lever. Imagine a shock wave from hitting a bump in the road, or the twisting forces on a down tube.

Normally these stresses would be dispersed around the frame, but instead are stopped rather abruptly by a solid clamp around the tube. Clamps require more maintenance they collect moisture under them and if over tightened can dig into the tube and start a stress riser.

Prior to the “No Braze-ons” craze, all the various derailleur manufacturers provided clamp-on fittings because there was no standardization in gear lever design, for example, and clamp-on gear lever had already been standard practice for the most part.

By the 1970s, when braze-ons made a return, Campagnolo so dominated the market that most frames (Especially Italian.) came with a Campagnolo brazed on lever boss. Other manufacturers (Shimano for example.) were forced to design their gear levers to fit the Campagnolo lever boss. 

I do feel if anyone is restoring a bike with a “No braze-ons frame” from this era should keep the cable clamps because they are authentic for that period.

Footnote: Re-posted from March 2006 with aditional content added.

                          

New Dave Moulton Owners Forum

Last weekend I put together a new “Dave Moulton Owners” Forum, it went live yesterday. I now have just under 200 owners of frames I built listed on my bike registry. A forum where we can chat as a community seemed like the next logical step.

Membership of the forum is not limited to just people who own frames that I built, but anyone who is interested may join. The people who come here to this blog for example, are most welcome, especially those who comment on a regular basis.

At the moment anyone interested needs to register and be approved. Not that I am rejecting anyone’s request, most sign up under a pseudonym so I have no way of knowing who they are. But I feel the small inconvenience of having to register will not deter anyone who is really interested, and it does give me some control over the tone and the content of the forum.

The people who comment here on this blog are for the most part a pretty civil bunch. We have very few flame wars, and I am confident the same atmosphere will transfer to my forum. I will not insist, but I will encourage everyone to sign up under their own name.

There is wat too much “Keyboard Courage” on the Internet. When a person posts under his/her own name, they tend to think through what they say if their friends or family might read it.

Remember what your Momma always said, “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing.” I would add to that, “Don’t say anything under a pseudonym that you would not say to that person’s face.”

The new forum is at http://davemoultonowners.freeforums.net/ There is also a perminant link in the Navigation Bar at the top of this page.

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On another subject, in May I wrote 10 articles for Answers.com, who hired me at the end of April as a “Cycling Expert.” There is a link to the articles in the right hand column of this page. I am writing for an audience who are mostly newbie cyclist, so I doubt whether regular readers here will learn anything new.

The tone of the articles is also different. Here I always feel I am talking personally to a definite audience, whereas the articles on answers.com they require articles that are more authoritative and less personal.

I will always be looking for suggestions for subject matter. If you have question, bicycle related and you would like to know the answer, or something you already know but think it would make an interesting piece, please let me know.

                                       

Britain's bike friendly cars of the 1950s

I got my first lightweight bike in 1950; it was only five years after the end of WWII and the economic turnaround in Britain and the rest of Europe was only in its early stages. Petrol was in short supply throughout WWII for obvious reasons. It was needed for the war effort, plus off shore oil had yet to be discovered in the UK. Oil had to be imported, and petrol was strictly rationed.

Rationing did not end at the end of WWII, in fact in 1948, (Three years after the war ended.) The Motor Spirit Regulation Act was passed by the British Government, and red dye was added to some petrol. The red petrol was for agriculture and commercial use only. A private motorist caught with red petrol in his tank, could lose his driver’s license for a year, and a petrol station selling red gas to private motorists could be shut down.

The scarcity of petrol throughout the war and the five years that followed, meant there was very little motorized traffic on the roads, and even when petrol rationing ended in 1950, the average working man did not rush out to buy a car, many had never owned, or even driven a car. Traffic was light even into the mid to late 1950s.

In the late 1940s, my pre-teen years, I would ride my bike after school, in the dark using battery lights, with no fear for my safety from my parents. This era is now referred to as the “Golden Age of Cycling.” On the Continent of Europe, cycle racing was the number one sport.

Looking back, it was a great time to ride a bike. Many of the cars on the road were pre-war from the 1920s and 1930s. New cars produced were like the Morris Minor (Above.) and the Ford Anglia, (Below.) had a tiny engines around one liter. (1,000cc.) About the size of many motorcycles today.

You could forget about zero to sixty in a few seconds; for most vehicles, even the new ones, *60mph was the top speed, and that was probably downhill with the wind behind you. Throughout the 1950s, on city streets, there were still as many bicycles as cars, there were even a few horse drawn carts still in use.

A car driver did not sit fuming at a traffic light because there was a cyclist on a horse and cart ahead of him. The driver was lucky if he could get above 20mph between lights, and a fit cyclist on a lightweight bike could get away from a light faster than he could.

The first Motorway (Freeway.) the M1, did not open until 1959. It was approximately 70 miles long from London to Birmingham. I remember within the first few weeks it was littered with broken down cars, as people took their old clunkers out and took them up to speeds they were never built to maintain. The Golden Age of Cycling ended from that point on, as throughout the 1960s and 1970s, more motorways were built and other main roads were widened and straightened.

During the 1950s, most of the people driving cars had grown up riding bicycles, their parents probably still rode a bicycle as their personal transport. They didn’t get upset with cyclists on the road, and they were content to cruise along at 30mph, occasionally reaching 50 or 60 on a straight road that ran downhill. At least they were in they were protected from the rain and cold.

Gradually all that changed, and now you have a generation who never rode a bike as a kid. Owning and driving a car becomes ever increasingly expensive, and with the spending of all that money comes an attitude of entitlement. 

However, Britain is still the same size as it was in the 1950s, but with a far greater population. Improved highways mean that you can drive from one city to another in a very short time. But what do you do when you get to the big city, where there is nowhere to park, and streets where built for horse drawn vehicles?

The cars of the 1950s and before may have been underpowered by today’s standards, but they still got people from A to B. They were cheap to buy, used less petrol, and they were simple to work on. A person could do their own maintenance. Most of all because of their lack of power and speed they were less of a danger to pedestrians and cyclists.

*Footnote: I am sure someone far more knowledgeable about the Morris Minor will tell me it had a top speed was in excess of 60mph. But just as many of today’s cars have a maximum speed well over 100mph. few are ever driven to that limit. 

                          

49cm. 1st Generation Fuso

I was recently able to buy a 49cm. 1st. Generation Fuso frame for my wife. Built in 1985 the frame has had very little use and is in near mint condition. 49cm. was the smallest standard size I made, although I did occasionally build a 48cm. special order, but these are extremely rare. The paint on this one is yellow and charcoal grey metallic. 

(Above.) This being an early model it has the metal enameled head badge which is a nice touch. I know the brakes are not period correct, but this bike is for riding and modern brakes actually stop, as opposed to the 1980s Campagnolo brakes that were more like speed modulators.

I found some Suntour Bar-End gear levers. Suntour was always looked on as a downgrade from Shimano. It was cheaper, but I never viewed it as inferior. Beautifully designed and well made these bar-end shifters are a good example.

If you are not familiar with these, when you pull back on the lever to shift down, it has a ratchet action that has very little resistance, just the resistance of the derailleur return spring. When you push forward to change up it is normal friction shift. But the friction now has the help of the return spring. This is a simple but ingenious idea that actually improved friction shifting. As far as I can remember the idea never made it to friction down tube shifters. 

                          

Right before Mothers’ Day my Mother Board died

My usual morning ritual on waking is to turn on the computer and allow it to warm up while I make coffee. Then while the coffee is brewing I check my emails, the weather, and see what is going on in the world.

Last Tuesday I awoke, stumbled into my office, pushed the start button on my PC, and…. Nothing happened, no friendly blue light, not a sound. I had to sit around until 9 am. That’s when my local computer fix-it guy opens up for business. He told me he was swamped with work, and couldn’t even look at my machine until the end of the week.

That’s okay, I thought. There is plenty of other things need doing around the house, and the weather is nice, I might even ride my bike. You see I didn’t want to rush out and buy a new computer, if it was going to be a simple fix like a new switch, or something.

No such luck. Friday afternoon the fix-it guy called to say my Mother Board had died. I’m not even sure what a Mother Board is, but I had to take the expert’s word that nothing will compute without it, and it would cost more than a whole new machine to replace this Mother.

So now it was computer shopping time, this was going to be fun. The first thing I noticed was where there was once rows and rows of PCs, now there is just one little shelf in a corner. It’s all lap tops, and tablets now, but I just bought a beautiful large screen monitor a couple of months ago, (Great for watching bike races.) so I just needed the “Tower” part.

Then came the realization that all the new computers come with Windows 8. I had heard a lot about Windows 8, most of it not good.

“Can’t I just use, Windows 7? It does everything I need to do.”

I was told no. “Okay, can you show me what it does?” Where upon the salesman started to make all these different things happen with lightning speed.

“Wait… I’m never going to remember all this by the time I get home. Does it come with instructions?”

“No, there are no instructions, but I can sell you a tutorial disc for twenty dollars.”

Here’s a tip. Don’t buy the tutorial, it gives you stupid little tasks to perform, and if you don’t perform then you can’t continue to the next stage. The tutorial is almost as hard to operate as Window 8 itself.

Where there used to be buttons that I would click on to do something, now I have to then play “Hunt the button.” These magically appear when I hover the curser in the corners of the screen.

When I turn on the PC, I see a page with the time in large letters; I have a number of clocks in my home I don't need the time. I discovered, quite by accident, that I click anywhere on this page for it to disappear and reveal the "Log-in" box. The opening Clock screen is completely superfluous.

One of the first things I did was try to download the software that I use to build and maintain my web sites. I placed the disc in the tray and nothing happened. So I got on the phone to Microsoft tech support to ask how to download this program I needed.

After a long session with an automated voice system, I finally got a real person who passed me on to another person who then passed me on to yet another person. Then I was told that a tech person would call me back, probably on Monday. (This was Saturday.) Then came the kicker… This would cost me $250 to speak to their tech person. I refused their offer of service at this outrageous price.

Instead I Googled. “How do you open a disc in Windows 8?” I got my answer. When you put the disc in and close the tray, a tiny, almost transparent, box appears in the top right corner of the screen. It only stays in view for a few seconds, then disappears. If you are not looking for it you don’t even see it.

You click on this box and another box appears and asks what you want to do, one of the options being “Run.” I ran the software and the program was up and running in about five minutes. A lot less time than I had spent on the phone with Microsoft.

The problem as I see it, the people who design these programs have become way too clever for their own good. And just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. The people who designed Windows 8 lost sight of the fact that for most people the computer is a tool to get work done, it is not a fucking video game.

There was nothing wrong with the old system when you put a disc in the tray, a window opened in the middle of your screen that said “Run” or “Play.” What ever happened to the old adage of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Microsoft’s motto seems to be, “If it ain’t broke, work on it until it is.”

Please excuse the rant, but I needed to get this out of my system before I can settle down to serious writing. This couldn’t have come at a worse time. I have just been hired by Answers.com as an “Expert” writer on Cycling. (See the badge in the right hand column.) They want a minimum of 10 articles a month, and I have just lost a week because of this problem, and it could take me another week just to find my way around Windows 8.