I'm reminded of a man I met in about 1975 at a shop called the Broken Spoke in Dover Point, NH, named James Farnsworth. He advocated what he called "full throw cycling" which essentially meant using extremely long cranks, huge rings, and a lowish cadence. He had a custom chrome Schwinn Paramount with a very high bracket to suit the long cranks, which were T.A. 180's with machined bolt on block extensions giving perhaps 4 or 5 cm. more length. The largest of the triple T.A. rings was at least a 65 or 70. The bike had some rather weird and rather crude modified components, like the SunTour GT rear changer that had it's cage lengthened by cutting and brazing in a Mafac wrench! He let me try the bike (with my wheels) and any impressions I had are lost in time, even if they had not been hopelessly colored by teenage enthusiasm. I wonder how he talked Schwinn into building this for him? Does anyone else remember this guy? By the way, I use 170's and one set of 172.5's on 60 cm c to c frames. I'm thinking of going shorter for fixed gear, say 165's(don't think 167.5's would make much difference).
Best Regards,
Wes Gadd