Richard Cielec asked, as an afterthought on a French hubs posting <snip>
"Ah, and threading - what about threading for free wheel? French hubs with English threads?"
I've been involved with derailleur bikes a bit more than 40 years now, and it suddenly strikes me how SELDOM the issue of french-threaded hubs and freewheels has come up. I have one French threaded FW (34.7 mmx 1mm), which I just keep around in case someone shows up with an old Atom Tandem brake hub that needs it. Or something.
But, two tales come to mind:
1) The early Phil hubs came with firm instructions that using FR FW would ruin the hub, because the diameter was enough smaller that it would squeeze and damage the cartridge bearing (as I recall the reason).
2) It was some kind of big event, one that included a climb to a Cascades Pass, about 1973, I think out of Eugene. We were near the top, and one chap had a real problem. He had used an Eng/Ital FW on his french-threaded Campy Record hub, and spun off the tops of the hub threads with the loose FW. Just ruined that hub. As usual, the cheaper, easier to replace part, the FW, was steel; the harder to replace and more expensive hub was Al. Guess which fails? Steel crank puller, aluminum cranks...
harvey sachs
mcLean VA.