Speaking of large flange 1-piece alloy hubs. When did the BH "Racelight" hub model come out?
Troy Warnick Olympia, WA --
On Sun, 24 Feb 2002 21:20:54
Hilary Stone wrote:
>Harden were making one piece large flange hubs (which were forgings) from
>1945 in Britain.
>
>Hilary Stone, Bristol, England
>
> Mark Bulgier wrote:>
>> This is mostly guesswork, but I think in the 50s they didn't have the
>> technology to make all-aluminum large flange hubs. Large flange hubs were
>> most commonly steel hub barrels with aluminum flanges pressed on (Airlite,
>> Gnutti, FB etc).
>>
>> It seems to me that the all-aluminum body was MaxiCar's and Prior's claim to
>> fame, but they couldn't make a near-net forging with large flanges, due to
>> the limitations of their aluminum forging technology. (Near-net means close
>> to the final shape, little machining needed) Of course a modern-style
>> one-piece large flange hub could be machined from a solid billet, but that
>> would be inefficient and wasteful. I'm assuming that near-net casting was
>> possible but not considered for a high quality part - probably the aluminum
>> casting technology of the time would have resulted in a weak part or one
>> with thick, ugly sections.
>>
>> So to keep the one-piece AL body and accommodate the fashion of the day for
>> large flanges, Prior and MaxiCar made these riveted-together oddballs.