The fun part about all this was the behind-the-scenes work that nobody ever saw. Now, you'd expect, given the cost of Campagnolo back in 1973 that the work of drilling the components out would have been done carefully and lovingly done, after much stress analysis.
Yeah, right.
Try to visualize a young kid pouring over an attic work table, Craftsman portable drill strapped into a drill press stand, a couple of burring bits, and a collection of hand files, working on the classic dictum of "if it looks right, it probably is right". Believe me, I found a few exceptions to that rule - and got a seat of the pants education on stress analysis. It was primarily a process of drilling or grinding alloy away until it looked like it might crack in the next ten miles.
Amazingly, except for a complete failure on the rear parallelogram (and I mean complete - visualize hearing a snap while shifting on an uphill climb - it all worked. Of course I was fifteen miles from home, riding alone, when that happened. It was nice being so footloose and fancy free in those days that I wasn't bothered by the though of trashing an expensive component. I sure couldn't see myself going through that kind of money nowadays.
George R. "Syke" Paczolt Montpelier, VA
classicrendezvous-request@bikelist.org wrote: Send Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 23:31:48 +1300 From: Wayne Davidson <wayne.collect@xtra.co.nz> To: Classic Rendezvous <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org> Subject: Re: [CR]serious Weight Weenieism - when did it start? Message-ID: <BFA171E4.8138%wayne.collect@xtra.co.nz> In-Reply-To: <20051115200231.50416.qmail@web33901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Precedence: list Message: 17
Hi all, while reading this I was amazed we have never heard more stories about componet failure due to overuse of files and rotary burrs etc, Whenever I alter something I do it in such a way as to retain strength but lighten it at the same time, just drilling a hole here and there is not the way to do it, you need to look at the material you are doing it to, where the stress points are, where the forces are when being used etc. One can also remember that a hollow gudeon pin on a engine is stronger than a solid one, the point being that 2 surface tensions to break is harder to occur than 1 surface tension. Also look at the huret jubilee RD, you never hear of a failure with the main body, well designed and made....regards wayne davidson Invers NZ.......
PS looking forward to hearing about some failures.........
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