David Feldman said:
>Combine a more skilled and attentive assembly with modern improvements in
> small things--cables, pads, where to grease/distrust of factory bearing
> installation and frame alignment--and those bikes would work much better
> than in their day of manufacture with fewer mechanical and wear problems.
> Yes? No?
A definite yes. After a few years of tweaking the heck out of my bike-boom PX-10 (LJ supers, Weyless hubs, Phil Woods BB, etc.) I finally got sick of the sloppy frame work and used the (by then) chipped paint as an excuse to strip the frame and spend a winter ('75 I think) refining the lugs. I feathered the edges, cleaned up the curves, and removed tiny blobs from sloppy brazing. After quite a few hours I had a frame with lugs as crisp as many of the custom frames I lusted after but could not afford. Before painting it I added a few brazeons (Campy BB cable guides, water bottle bosses, etc.) and painted it Raleigh Team Pro Red. I stopped the paint farther up the stays & fork than it was orginally, exposing more chrome (I was very influenced by the picture of the Raleigh Team Pro in the '74 catalog. At the time I remember thinking that it was one of the most beautiful bikes I'd ever seen... I always meant to go all the way and add the contrasting yellow panels to my bike but never did).
Anyway, it never really rode any better, but I sure was a lot more proud of it.
Bob Hovey
Columbus, GA