Power, Torque and Traction

Belgian Wout van Aert wearing the World Cyclocross Championship Jersey.

A higher gear equals more traction under certain conditions. I learned this driving a manual (Stick-shift) transmission car in the late 1950s. The engine puts out torque, or twisting power, and torque is what moves the car forward. But only if the tires are gripping the road surface, if the wheels start to spin on ice, snow, or soft ground, then torque is reduced to zero, and the car goes nowhere.

The torque the engine produces is multiplied by the transmission, with the first gear (Lowest) increasing the torque the most. Therefore, first gear is engaged when starting out from a standstill as more torque is needed to move the weight of the vehicle. Once the car is rolling, less torque is required so the driver shifts up through the gears to eventually reach top gear, which puts out the least amount of torque, but transmits more revs, or speed.

If the car is stuck in mud or deep snow, the driver can sometimes get out by starting from a standstill in 3rd or 4th gear, thus reducing torque. He then pushes the clutch pedal down to disengage the clutch, revs the engine a little, and then allows the clutch to engage slightly so the clutch is slipping.

In normal circumstances, if the driver were to allow the clutch to fully engage, the engine would most likely stall because the load would be too great. But by slipping the clutch the driver is limiting the power going to the wheels. As the clutch slowly engages, torque is transmitted to the wheels gradually, just enough to move the car, but not applying too much torque so the wheels start to spin.

Now let’s fast forward from what I learned from driving a stick-shift in the 1950s, to what I learned riding cyclo-cross in the 1970s, and bear with me, there is a connection.

I was running my frame building business just outside Worcester in the West Midlands area of England. A good place to be in the bike business, as this area was a hotbed of British cycle racing, including cyclo-cross. From October to January there were events every weekend within easy driving distance.

Business slowed in the winter months, my commute to work on my bike, and a two-mile run on foot every evening was enough training, coupled with a cyclo-cross race each Sunday. I always reckoned a one-hour cyclo-cross race was the equivalent of 80 hard miles on the road. That is what my legs always felt like after a race.

There were all class of riders in these races. Professionals rode with the amateurs, and after a bunch start, the events soon strung out to a procession around a one mile or so course. I was in my early forties and still pretty fit, plus over time I gained a cyclo-cross skill set that allowed me to beat riders who were younger and faster on the road.

Some of the bigger events in the Birmingham area had enough prize money that some professional riders from Belgium and other mainland European countries would come across and enter. These guys were in a different class all together.

On a one mile course I would expect to be lapped at least two or three times during a race by the leading pros. I remember this Belgian rider went past me having caught me on my second lap, he then passed me every second lap. In other words, he was riding at twice my speed.

One time I was passed going up a steady incline through deep mud, I was in a low gear struggling to keep moving, and as this guy went by, I noticed he was on his smallest sprocket, probably 13 or 14 teeth. While my wheels were losing grip, slipping, and spinning, he appeared to be gliding across the top of the mud. Which of course was exactly what he was doing.

I remembered my old driving lesson that while my lower gear gave me more torque, it was of little use if I did not have traction. His higher gear equaled more traction, plus with his speed and momentum he was going so fast there was less time for him to sink in the mud.

Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) leads the GC group on the Grand Colombier (Image: Bettini Photo)I was recently reminded of this story watching Wout van Aert perform in the Tour de France. Setting an unbelievable pace on mountain stages, shelling some of the world’s best climbers out the back of the peloton. (Above,)

Not really considered a pure climber, certainly not built like one. The other thing is Van Aert won several stages in a sprint. Former World Cyclo-Cross Champion, he must have built up a tremendous core strength riding big gears through the mud in the manner I described earlier.

He certainly developed a big engine that produces a lot of torque.

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Tuggos in Top

I set out for a ride last Sunday at around 6:30 am. It is best to get out early at this time of year in South Carolina, as by 11:00 am it is brutally hot.

About six miles out I needed to make a left turn and checked behind me. I noticed what I can only describe as a huge orange “Blob” on a bike coming up behind me. I gave a hand signal and moved to the center of the road in readiness to make my turn.

The Blob followed and after I turned, he came by me, a young twenty-something man on a bike, wearing a fluorescent orange tee shirt. He was huge, at a guess well over six feet and at least 350 lbs., maybe even 450.

“Good morning,” I said.... Not so much as a peep from my morbidly obese fellow traveler. As he passed I saw why, he was wearing head phones. He had on a pair of baggy shorts, and his calves were shaped like huge upturned beer bottles.

He was riding in the highest gear he had, pedaling in slow motion but going 3 or 4 mph faster than me, I was happily spinning my medium gear. I wondered, do people who don’t know any better, think a bike is like a car that you shift up through the gears until you reach the highest gear, and then you leave it there.

I had no interest in upping my pace, I was planning to do at least 50 miles, and I doubted the orange blob was going that far. Sure enough, not long after he disappeared from sight, I spotted him again in the distance headed back on the opposite side. As we passed, I gave my usual smile and a wave. I was totally ignored as before.

The whole incident made me think back to the 1950s when I started riding. Back in the UK we used to call people like that “Tuggos.” Now I just call them POBs or “People on Bikes.” The term Tuggo usually applied to the younger male. An old Geezer on a bike, or a female, would not be a Tuggo.

The orange blob definitely fell into the category of Tuggo. Don’t get me wrong, I am not knocking what this person was doing. He was out getting some exercise and at least trying to reduce his weight, but a Tuggo or a POB is one who hasn’t yet learned the little refinements, like position, gear choice, etc., that make cycling more of a pleasure.

When I started racing the smallest rear sprocket available was 14 teeth, so top gear was around 96 inches. The top gear, as it is today was reserved for downhill, and maybe a fast sprint finish with a tail wind. We would do most of our racing on about 81 or 86 inch gear.

This meant we pedaled a lot faster than today, and so usually trained on about 65 to 70 inches. Back in the 1950s there were a lot of Tuggos, people who used bikes as their only means of transport. Especially young people in their teens or twenties, most could not afford a car. I didn’t pass my driving test and own a car until I was almost 30 years old, which was pretty typical.

So, we would be out training in a group of maybe ten or so riders, during a warm summer evening. We would be in an orderly pace line, and spinning, or “Twiddling” as we called it, at about 100 rpm. All of a sudden, a Tuggo would come flying past us pushing his highest gear.

He was invariably out for the evening dressed in a suit and tie, which would be flying in the wind. Remember this was the 1950s and people dressed up if they went out socially. The average Tuggo was usually pretty fit as he rode a bike everywhere and was good for a short turn of speed especially as he was in a much higher gear.

We usually ignored them, apart from whoever was at the back of the pace line giving a warning shout of “Tuggo in Top,” as he came by. (Meaning in Top Gear.) We seldom gave chase, because that would just break up the pace line and anyway the Tuggo usually stopped at the next pub, if not we would pass him again on the next hill.

Fond memories of a far simpler times, and Tuggos in top.

Repost from August 2012

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Man Exploiting Man

Under capitalism man exploits man. Under socialism it is the exact opposite

That is a joke. Not original, but never-the-less I found it funny and when I posted it on a social media site, I thought it was fairly safe in that it pokes fun at both ends of the political spectrum.

But someone fired back,

“Um, no. I grew up under socialism. Had good education and access to health care at no extra cost.”

So, this person did not find this funny because it seems in their view under the socialism end of things no one exploits anyone.

I usually steer clear of politics for the simple reason I am a Brit living in the USA. I am not a citizen, I am a Green Card carrying, resident alien, with permanent residency. Under this arrangement I get all the same rights a US citizen gets.

They allow me to have a driver’s license and own and drive a car, to own a home and pay taxes like everyone else. The two things I cannot do are vote or do jury duty, I can manage quite well without those responsibilities, thank you very much.

But because I can’t vote I feel strongly that I should not voice political opinions and try to influence others who do vote.

However, it annoys me when left wing eco-nuts assume that the bicycle is exclusively theirs, and on the other hand, there are those who think because I ride a bicycle I must be a left wing eco-nut.

The commenter on my “joke” stated that they grew up under socialism with free health care, sounds a lot like growing up in the UK in the post war years. I grew up in that same period and here is my take on it just from what I observed, and experienced.

Before WWII there was a (Capitalist.) class system in the UK where a small percentage of the population had all the wealth. (Sound familiar.) Most of this wealth had been handed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years. The rest of the population were subservient to the wealthy class and relied on them for a job and a living. And in many cases rented a home from a wealthy landlord.

This system, with all its faults, had made Great Britain a world leader. This is pretty remarkable when you consider that Great Britain is less than the size of California. But over the years they built ships, sailed all over the world, taking over countries, taking commodities and raw materials at a cost of next to nothing.

This made the wealthy even wealthier. Britain manufactured a great deal of the goods that were shipped and sold all over the world. Up until 1919 the world currency was based on the British Pound, not the US Dollar. As a kid five shillings, which was a quarter of a Pound, was called a “Dollar.” Because there were once four US Dollars to the Pound. Today the Pound is worth $1.31.

Under the class system anyone born into the working classes found it difficult to reach the top levels of management in a large company. The CEOs and captains of industry were all from the wealthy upper classes. The British education system pre-WWII was geared so that working class kids would be separated at age ten years old.

The bright kids would get a higher education and become the accountants and middle management in industry. The rest of the kids got a basic sducation and had the self-esteem beaten out of them, physically and by verbal put down. This made them subservient laborers who would do a menial job without question or become cannon fodder for the armies to go off and conquer more lands.

Everything changed when WWII ended. The men who came home from the war had the attitude, “We laid our life on the line for our country, now we want a piece of the pie.” Clement Attlee the leader of the Socialist Labor Party was voted into power with a huge majority.

The Labor Government took over ownership by Nationalization of the steel industry, coal mining, and the railroads. They also created National Health Care, with free medicine and health care for everyone.

Of course, nothing is free, it was to be paid for by increased taxes. The government owned the hospitals and they paid the doctors and dentists a flat rate according to the number of patients they had.

There is a standing joke in the US about the British and their bad teeth, which is a direct result of NH dentists giving poor care. What incentive is there to give good care, and do extras like clean or straighten people’s teeth when you will not get paid more?

The other thing that happened was, there grew this huge government bureaucracy to manage the health care system and before long there were more bureaucrats than doctors or nurses.

When the government took over the steel, coal, and railroad industries the trade unions in those industries flourished. Trade unions are good when they fight for worker’s rights and make sure they are not exploited or under paid. But if your boss is the government, and the government is a socialist government, they are on your side.

In the mid-1970s there was a Conservative government in power who were not sympathetic the coal miners’ union when they asked for more money. The coal miners went on strike, and without coal, no electricity. There was a huge stockpile of coal, but the railway union refused to move it.

The country went on a three-day work week, and eventually the conservative government had to resign. A labor government was elected, the coal miners got their raise in pay and went back to work. By 1978 it seemed that everyone was on strike for more money.

Truck drivers were on strike and I couldn’t get deliveries of oxyacetylene to build my frames, I would go home and there would be no TV ‘cos the TV workers were on strike. When hospital workers who do laundry etc., went on strike and people died because doctors could not operate on them, it was the end of the line for me. It was then I decided to move to the United States.

I think many UK citizens felt as I did, because it was soon after that Maggie Thatcher and her conservative party got back in power. She de-nationalized much of the nationalized industries, and even privatized some of the hospitals. When the Labor Party got back in power in later years it was a much-watered down socialism, more in line with the US Democrats.

With no intention to influence anyone, I am just telling of my own experiences of living under both ends of the spectrum. Going to school in the 1940s in an education system evolved though years of extreme capitalism. Then see my country go to the other end of extreme socialism. Finally experiencing the frustrations of trying to run a business, in an atmosphere where not only the government, but my fellow man was against me.

Yes capitalists exploit their fellow man, that can often be blatantly obvious, but don’t tell me that socialists don’t exploit their fellow man, when they go on strike and let people die or suffer financially so they can get a pay increase.

And when unions become so powerful, they can bring down a democratically elected government, I call that exploiting your fellow man? A person who fails to see the humor in that little joke at the top of the page, has lost the ability to laugh at themselves and their belief system.

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A Slice in Time

Recently I was thinking back to 2008, just twelve years ago, a slice in time if you will, as I thought of the things I had done since that date. It seems not too long ago, and yet for someone sixteen years old today, that twelve years would be the entire memory of their life.

2008 came to mind for several reasons. It was the year the housing bubble burst and threw us into a recession. I was 72 years old and had a nice little part-time job, in an engineering design department of a company that built forklift trucks. It was a three-day a week job that paid well and I enjoyed, but being part-time I was one of the first to go when the recession hit. It was the last job I would have.

2008 was an election year, and America elected its first Black President, Barack Obama. This was something I thought I would never see in my lifetime and thought finally there was hope for Racial Equality. Sadly, here we are twelve years later, and we have a “Black Lives Matter” movement, and protests on the streets.

Four years ago I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, which I am managing quite well with a relatively low dose of medication, exercise, and a plant-based diet. I have not developed any more symptoms apart from a slight tremor in my right hand which I can control for the most part, and it does not stop me from doing anything I want to do.

Last year my wife and I moved from Summerville, near the coast of South Carolina, 200 miles inland to just outside Greenville, South Carolina. Summerville not far from Charleston was a beautiful place to live but was becoming over-crowded and traffic was horrendous. We are now in a rural area more suited for a quiet retirement.

After reflecting on the last twelve years I thought back to the time from 1940 when I was four years old, up until 1952 when I was sixteen. Another twelve-year slice in time, and still in quite vivid living memory for me, with so much happening in the World during that period.

1940 My father somewhere in the Sahara Desert during WWII.1940, WWII had started in September the previous year, and my father had left to go fight.

I remember little of him before he left, and it would be five years before he returned.

The USA had not yet joined in the war, that would happen the following year in 1941, after Pearl Harbor.

In 1940 we were living in the East-end of London where my father worked on the docks as a Stevedore, loading and unloading ships.

I remember the bombing during the Blitz when a bomb landed a couple of streets behind us. All the windows in the back of the house were blow out, and the blast blew open the bedroom door next to my bed, slamming the door against my bed.

I was uninjured, so too was my mother in the next bed and my sister who was a baby less that a year old. My older brother who was eleven years old at the time, slept in a back bedroom and was blown out of bed and cut by flying glass. We went down to a coal seller, under the house. I remember having to hold my baby sister, who was just screaming and would not stop, while my mother tore strips from a bedsheet to dress my brother’s cuts. Luckily, my brother was not seriously injured, but I clearly remember him covered in blood from head to toe.

Me age 4 with my father's brother David who I was named after. The tents in the background are an army camp.Soon after we moved to a rural area in the South of England where we waited out the rest of the war. I never understood the war at that age, I had known nothing else.

There was no actual fighting, but a lot of soldiers camped nearby, training and playing war games. A lot of military vehicles and even tanks on the road, which for a small boy was pretty awesome.

I particularly remember the American troops arriving in 1944 prior to the Normandy invasion. I was now eight years old.

What I remember most was these American soldiers were always laughing and goofing around.

They seemed like adults to me at the time but now I realize they were teenagers, just barely ten years older than me. Laughing and goofing around because that is what teenagers do.

Then one day in early June 1944 they were suddenly gone. They were there one day, camped on every available piece of spare land, then the next day they were gone. It was a surreal experience.

It was years later as an adult I would realize that many of these happy, laughing kids, had left to die on the beaches of Normandy in their thousands. It would have a profound affect on me that would stay with me for the rest of my life.

My father fought the entire North African Campaign against Field Marshal Rommel’s German Army. He came home briefly in 1944, before returning to France just days after the Normandy Invasion, and went right through Europe and into Germany, and did not come home again until the war was over in 1945.

My father spent the entire war as a member of a tank crew, and was completely uninjured, “Not even a scratch,” as he put it. When he first came home, he was my hero because of what he had done, and because my mother had talked continuously about him while he was gone.

My father turned out to be emotionally distant, and physically abusive to both my mother and me. But war will do that to a man, I was three and a half years old when he left and eight years old when he returned. We never had a chance to bond.

We moved back to the East End of London in 1946 and my father went back to his old job. The kids who had stayed out the war in London were tough and street wise. We evacuees who had spent the war in a rural area, were unsophisticated country bumkins. We even had a different accent and were bullied horribly.

My father who was an amateur boxer would have none of this and taught me the art of self-defense. The result was to be punched by a 36-year-old man, who was a hardened war veteran, hurt far more than any kid at school could hit me. I became unafraid of being hit and fought back. Eventually the bullying stopped.

The East End of London was a high crime area, with an extremely corrupt police force, especially right after WWII. In 1949 when I was thirteen years old, my mother talked my father into moving to Luton, an industrial town just 30 miles north of London.

Me with my first new bike at 13. A Hercules roadster that must have weighed 45 lbs.This move was the one thing that changed the whole course of my life. I got my first bike, and got into cycling as a means of escape from my dysfunctional home.

I passed an entrance exam to a Technical School which lead to an Engineering Apprenticeship at 16 years old.

I got my first lightweight bike at fourteen year old, joined the Luton Arrow Cycling Club at fifteen, but had to wait until I was sixteen to race.

By then I had hundreds, if not thousands of miles in my legs, was super fit and raring to go. I started to win races, and people were telling me I was good at something.

No wonder I lapped it up, even my own father was proud, as long as I won. If I did not, he would say, “You’re fucking useless.” I think more than anything I wanted him to come out and watch me race. But he never did.

Looking back, that first twelve years in memory, seems double the length of the last twelve. But when I consider all that happened in that first slice of time, it is not so much that it is longer, it is just a thicker slice.

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Restored Memories

Just this last week I received an email from Jim Taylor, owner of a bike store called “Grindin’ Gears Bikes n’ Boards, in Lloydminster, Alberta, Canada. Jim had come into possession of a “project” bike as he referred to it. A custom ‘dave moulton’ frame, that he intends to restore, and ride himself. 

I reached for my frame numbers record book, a little hardcover notebook where I recorded frame numbers of custom frames built from 1982 to 1986. When I moved my shop from San Marcos to Temecula, California, the book got misplaced during the move, and it is a small miracle that it survived and I still have it today.

This frame number is 1835, it is a 62 cm. frame. Custom frame numbers represent the date it was built.

This one was built in January 1983 and it was the 5th frame built that month.

It was ordered through Two-Wheel Transit Authority, a bike store in Huntington Beach, California. (Orange County, South of LA.)

A huge bike store that was housed in a building that was formerly a Bowling Alley.

Jim tells me that the original customer’s name is on the frame, Paul Johnson. The bike was picked up in Palm Springs, California, and brought to Alberta by a customer of “Grindin’ Gears. Sadly, the bike has been neglected for many years, probably stored in an outside barn, or shed.

Looking at my frame numbers book (Above.) brought back a lot of memories. In early 1983 I was still working out of the Masi shop in San Marcos. Previously working for Masi until the end of 1981 when I was laid off because of an overstock of Masi frames and a downturn in the economy.

In a bad economy there are always people who have money, and believe it or not one can survive making a high end product, where the issue is not the price but the quality, and even more important is delivering the product in a timely manner. I would build and deliver a custom frame in as little as two weeks.

Last frame built 1982. (See book page above.) Owner David Ball

I sold my frames through a network of bike dealers across the US. Dealers originally contacted by cold calling on the phone. The bike dealers loved it because they not only made a markup on the frame, the made money on the components, and labor to build wheels, and assemble the bike.

Frame #1834Selling though dealers gave me the quantity of orders that I could not have achieved by selling direct to individuals.

By January 1983 I had so many orders to fill, I was working 18 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week.

The pages in my book shows, I built 10 custom frames that month. February (A short month.) I built 7 more frames, and March another 11.

It had become obvious that I needed to get out of the Masi shop, and into my own facility. I did this by July 1983. Altogether in 1983, I built 96 custom frames, plus by the end of the year another 200 John Howard frames.

Frame #1839Looking back, it was a lot of work, but the repartition of building so many frames made me a better framebuilder.

It also made me faster so I could build even more, at the height of production I built 500 Fuso frames a year.

By then I did have employees doing much of the prep and finish work, plus I had a full-time painter. In the eary years I also did my own painting. Everything shown on this page, I painted.

The only problem was, when the demand for road frames dropped, it was no longer viable to keep going. By then I was burned out anyway.

Frame #2831Was it all worth it? You bet it was. There is a whole legacy of frames still out there, still being enjoyed by their owners. I still put in a lot of hours, writing this blog and maintaining my Bike Registry. However, I am a firm believer that a person should have a purpose in life.

Nearly every email I get starts something like this: “To be honest I had never heard of you or the Fuso, until I found this bike and looked it up online.” So, without all the time I spend promoting the brand now, all the hours I worked back then would be wasted, and many of these frames I sweated over would be in landfills.

#2832 Original owner Chuck Schmidt. Used regularly and still in mint condition. Also shown below.Throughout this article I have shown other bikes built around January/February 1983. Below is a track frame #2833 built for Jim Zimmerman and raced on the Trexlertown track in PA. Later it was bought and used as a "Work bike" by the late "Fast Eddie Williams, renowned bike messenger in New York City. (Below.) (Read articles here.)

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