PIVO was one of many French manufacturers who sold "faux lugged" alloy stems, i.e. stems that superficially resembled a lugged steel stem, but in fact were a single alloy casting or forging. As I've said before, I've seen nearly identical stems of this type marked with half a dozen different French brands or no brand at all, and I suspect maybe a single firm, pehaps one we never heard of, manufactured these for all the companies that sold them.
I am not in the least convinced that the AVA versions of these stems were actually made by AVA nor that they were any more prone to failure than the same design sold by other companies. It is true that there were several variations on this design, including one in which the back end of the stem was open such that one can see the quill bolt through the back of the stem. I think some or all such stems also had a hollow section in the center extending forward to the bar clamp. One intuitively feels that perhaps this particular variation might be prone to failure, although I've never seen any statistics to back that up. But I don't believe this variation was limited to AVA, nor that all AVA faux lugged stems were of this particular variation.
I think the AVA "death stem" myth is at least partly that, and is mostly based in America. This is because Peugeot, which used primarily used AVA bars and stems, was the leading French marque in the American market "In the Day". Some variation of the faux lugged stems marked as AVA may indeed have been more prone to failure than others. Probably the troublesome design would have been sold in Europe under several brand names. But American consumers would have most likely experienced or heard of failures of such stems marked as AVA, and quite likely OE on a Peugeot, and therefore AVA would have been the brand regarded as a "death stem".
I have personally never experienced a failure of a faux lugged alloy stem, despite having a lot of French bikes that use them. I have, however, experienced cracking of AVA bars, so I put more credence in the AVA "death bars" legend.
Regards,
Jerry Moos Big Spring, TX
Hughethornton@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 18/03/2007 23:19:13 GMT Standard Time, schmidi@gaponline.de writes:
Hello List, Yesterday I got a really old an wheathered light blue lightweight from one of my LBS decalled "Cicli Moser Trento". It is a entry level bike and i would say it was made in the fifties or sixties. It has a PIVO "death-stem"
This is the first reference I have seen to a PIVO death stem. There has been much correspondence on this list about AVA death stems and one person did query whether PIVO stems were the same because of a superficially similar design, but I am not aware of any confirmation.
PIVO stems were used successfully in competition for many years, notably by Jacques Anquetil, and I have never had any qualms about using them on various Gitanes that I have owned. I currently have 2 PIVO stems showing no signs of fracture or impending failure. Does anyone know for sure whether there is any weakness in the PIVO design?
Hugh Thornton
Cheshire, England