In a message dated 4/12/2004 9:33:03 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
sachs@erols.com writes:
> linked the the cavities of my cerebrum with ASTRA and similar emblems of
> quality during the bike boom.
>
> But, they would be quite the thing for a vintage car-top carrier using plain
> axles instead of this fru-fru QR stuff... :-)
>
After reading the Joe BZ recollection of his ol ride, I was going to chime in that my own dream bike from the late 60's had the Huret Wings, and then reading the aforequoted Sachsgram, out popped a referce to Astra, the very dream bike. This was a apparently a Motobecane product, and mine had the Allvit changer.
Our case sports a very vast selection of wingnut designs, and I remember that many a cartop carrier used them, most famous was the LaPrealpina that used the limited-edition 'composite' wingnuts.Limited in that too much sun would cause them to disintegrate. It was not catastrophic, however, it would just add to the security when the metal 'nut' itself stayed but the composite wings flew away.
This was a classic case that wingnuts was a disease we wanted to avoid.
Larry Black
Mt Airy, Md