Re: FW: [CR] New Equipment Failure Rate

(Example: Framebuilders:Brian Baylis)

Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 06:33:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Tom Dalton" <tom_s_dalton@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: FW: [CR] New Equipment Failure Rate
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
In-Reply-To: <a05111701b9946f650e3d@[10.0.1.2]>


Brandon Ives wrote:Talking about all this makes me wonder why the US never had a really good bike part group company. There are wonderful companies that make select parts, but nobody in the classic era was able to put a full group together, Thoughts?

This reminds me of a project the guys in my LBS used to talk about... Building an All-American bike. Mind you, it involved having Ben Serotta, back when he actually built bikes, build a custom frame with a big ol' BB shell to accept the Wald crankset. Full Wald grouppo, Carlisle tires....

Tom Dalton

Bethlehem, PA

At 4:10 PM -0700 8/29/02, Jim Merz wrote:
>I personally turned in more broken NR arms for warrantee when I was
>building frames
>than I ever saw returned of the Specialized cranks.

My experience from the outside is almost identical to Jim's and I agree with his post wholeheartedly. I've always liked the Specialized cranks and have never had any problems with them, though I have seen two broken at the pedal eye. I'm sure we have some material engineers on the list who could help us understand the difference in alloys used for parts today compared to 30 years ago. Campagnolo used the best of the best with one caveat, the best of the best in Italy. From what I'm told Campy never farmed out anything outside of Italy until they had Rolhoff make their chains. I don't know if this is 100% correct so please correct me if I'm wrong. This could explain the use of "inferior" alloy since it was the best available in Italy. Specialized went anywhere they could to get the best alloy.

In the past 30 years the world has become substantially smaller in the manufacturing world, and it's getting smaller each day. Any company who wants The Best can go to where The Best is and get it with relative ease today. I think even Campagnolo farms parts out to Asia and Europe today. Talking about all this makes me wonder why the US never had a really good bike part group company. There are wonderful companies that make select parts, but nobody in the classic era was able to put a full group together, Thoughts? enjoy, Brandon"monkeyman"Ives SB, CA -- ++++++++++++++ "Nobody can do everything, but if everybody did something everything would get done." --Gil Scott-Heron-- ++++++++++++++ Elfie and Monkeyboy's Wurld uv Wunder

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