Re: [CR]Shimano Aero Bike

(Example: Production Builders:LeJeune)

From: <OROBOYZ@aol.com>
Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 12:42:42 EDT
Subject: Re: [CR]Shimano Aero Bike
To: jswan@optonline.net, ABB3330002@aol.com
cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org

In a message dated 5/25/2005 8:57:48 AM Eastern Daylight Time, jswan@optonline.net writes:

<< Hi Alan,

We just had a similar thread on the Frame Builders' List. Someone was looking for a set of aero lugs.

I had the lugs he was looking for. I got one of the tube sets that you mentioned in the early '90s and built this fillet brazed "funny bike". Third picture down:

http://centerportcycles.com/pages/history/history3.html

I still had the lugs in my display case. >>

I think we talked about this before many moons ago (maybe before the current archives started) but I obtained two sets of that Tange aero tubing from McLean Fonveille (McLean & Silk Hope frames) before he died. He was sent (for very little $) the sets complete with lugs and dropouts etc. with the implied obligation to build bikes for display at the next New York Bike show. As conservative as he was, he decided he could not "get into that" so did not use them.

These tubes & lugs are the same raw elements that Irio Tomassini was given to make the Onion River team bikes: http://www.classicrendezvous.com/Italy/Tommasini/Tomo_Ware_1.htm

He reportedly disliked the result and swore never to make another with that tubing! They are a little whippy but not so bad. Not light at all though!

I built up one set of the tubing into a filet brazed time trail bike for my team rider Chris Blake, who went on to become NC State TT champ a couple of years in a row. http://www.cyclesdeoro.com/DB/ChrisBlakeTT.htm It is not exactly my style bike (lugless, etc.) but that's what he wanted.....

Dale Brown
Greensboro, NC USA