Terrible one is a BMX company. Is that close enough?
tom Martin Oakland Ca
> I worked for a framebuilder in 1984 who imported a large number of those
> headsets to install on his frames. They certainly looked nice enough - they
> had an anodized aluminum exterior that was exposed where they had been
> machined and the effect was FANCY.
> (OMAS had a similiar style to some of their headsets.) The steel bearing
> surfaces were ground and the headsets used ball bearings that were on the
> small side - I think 1/8".
>
> They may have looked nice enough, but in use they suffered dented races VERY
> quickly. This was even with a proper install, loose bearings, and a careful
> adjustment. The numerous problems with these headsets led us to start
> referring to FT as, well,
> I'll let you guess what the F was, but the T was TERRIBLE ! It was a
> well-deserved nickname and I'll leave it at that.
>
> They did perform adequately for display purposes !
>
> FT also made bottom brackets that were very similiar to the OMAS ones - with
> inadequate support to the bearings (i.e. no solid center sleeve) and these
> suffered a poor lifespan due to bearing side-loads and mis-alignment of the
> separate cups. Like many components of its day, it was poorly designed
> around the idea of simply substituting an undersized cartridge bearing for a
> cup and cone loose ball bearing, without taking into account the often
> sloppy and naturally innaccurate threaded mountings (i.e. the bottom bracket
> shell.) that the bearings would face. An old machinist saying goes "a
> bearing is only as good as its mounting " and there is much truth to that.
>
> Effin' Terrible !
> Now THERE is a name you can TRUST !
> I wonder if its been trademarked ?
>
> Mike Fabian
> San Francisco