Daniel Artley wrote:
>With all this talk of PX-10's being an out of the box racer, I'd like to
>question the cognoscenti about its true ilk. My PX-10, bought in 1968
>came with a 45x52 and 14-24 cogset, which were decidedly race gears, but
>the geometry seemed so much more touring than race. I loved that bike.
>The bike was comfortable, handled nice,
In the late '60s-early '70s, there was a major change in the geometry of racing bikes, starting in Italy and copied everywhere else. Head and seat angles became more vertical, wheelbase became shorter, ride became harsher and handling became twitchier.
Later in the '70s frame/tire clearance became much tighter too, and
bikes lost the ability to have fenders installed. (Previously, it
was common for racers to mount fenders on their bikes for training.)
Back in the day it mostly didn't occur to people that someone might
actually own more than one bicycle, so versatility was a desired
quality.
>though there was a particular "S"
>bend near the dam of Loch Raven reservoir north of Baltimore that brought
>out a harmonic vibration in its head tube.
Px-10s always did have the reputation for that, though I doubt that
it had anything to do with the head tube. Common folklore of the day
said that it was a Bad Idea to install a (Pletscher) rear rack on a
PX-10, that they would be prone to shimmy. I don't know how much of
this was due to the frame, how much to the wheels, how much to the
whippieness of the ubiuqitous Pletscher racks and how much to
folklore...
>
>Does anyone know people who actually raced the PX-10's of that era other
>than as beginning racers who shortly moved up to 'real' racing bikes?
I believe that stock PX-10s were actually raced in the Tour de France.
There is nothing about any other racing bike of the day that would make it fundamentally faster. The PX-10 was one of the lightest frames around.
Sheldon "PX-1" Brown
Newtonville, Massachusetts
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