Re: [CR]Ottusi modified Brooks B.17

(Example: Production Builders:Frejus)

Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 23:17:11 -0800
From: "Chuck Schmidt" <chuckschmidt@earthlink.net>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: Re: [CR]Ottusi modified Brooks B.17
References: <9D41D2D2-7E6A-11DA-B421-000A95E5928E@earthlink.net>


Michael Allison wrote:
>
> Hi Chuck,
>
> All of the Ottusi saddles I imported in the early 1960s were not made
> from Brooks. They did not have any Brooks marking on the leather or
> cantle plate. Also non of them had holes in the top leather. And all of
> them had a shortened/lowered rails at the rear. The leather sides of
> the saddle can be tucked inside the rails by 1 - 1 1/2 cm. I have a low
> rails Brooks pro and the sides just reach the rails. So draw your own
> conclusions.

Hi Michael,

The Ottusi saddle I have with the low Brooks B.17 frame (not shortened)... the leather sides (flaps) overlap the bottom of the rails by 19mm on each side. Even more than the 10 to 15mm of your shortened/lowered railed Ottusi.

Yes, on my Brooks Pro saddles the sides (flaps) just reach the bottom of the rails, but those saddles use the high Brooks frame not the low one.


> Yes, I am satisfied with the saddles I've "tuned." But I still have a
> ways to go. It always seemed odd and out of place to me to see a Brooks
> Pro saddle on a classic bike. Because these machines would have had
> some kind of reshaped saddle on them. It was very common for team
> mechanics to do this kind of work for riders. Though they probably just
> reshaped the cantle plate and not cut the rails.

Yes I enjoy having unique saddles for my bikes by extensively modifying them myself, but I don't happen to think a Brooks Pro looks out of place at all on a classic bike since the Brooks Pro along with the Idéale Rebour saddle were the finest production saddles ever made and were very common on high end bikes in the 60s and later.


> This is my 51st year
> of riding high-end racing machines, and never a clincher tire in the
> bunch.

I got a late start (31 years old) so this is only the end of my 30th year riding high-end racing bikes, but I've not missed but a few days in all those years (today was 81 degrees and 55 miles) so I think of myself as blessed. But then again it's not so hard to ride everyday of the year when you have the kind of weather we have in SoCal.

I think about two-thirds of my bikes have sew-ups and the other third have clinchers. It gets to be a real chore to keep that many sew-up tires side walls solutioned and without dried out glue. I also feel (my opinion) that today's clinchers are very close in feel to sew-ups. At least that's the way they feel to me switching between all the bikes I own (around 50?).

Regards, Chuck Schmidt South Pasadena, Southern California

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