[CR]"TheForez" hubs and TXIMISTA gears..Stronglight chainset

(Example: Component Manufacturers:Campagnolo)

From: "Norris Lockley" <norris.lockley@talktalk.net>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:22:11 +0100
Subject: [CR]"TheForez" hubs and TXIMISTA gears..Stronglight chainset

Clearly from recent jottings on his website and various other ramblings, Nick is crumbling under the weightof unresolved problems and unaswered que stions, so I thought it might be wise to give him a hand to get out of his mire.

The "TheForez" hubs are French, as Nick had assumed (I think) and not Ta iwanese as he joked. The area called the "FOREZ" is situated just to the no rth of St Etienne ( the centre of the French cycle industry in its heydey), and accommodated companies such as Pierre Lyotard (pedals), Ets Perrin (Pe lissier and Exelto hubs) , Belleri (bars and stems)and a whole hoste of oth er similar accessory manufacturers. at a guess the "theForez" hubs came out of the Perrin factory.

Tximista was a Spanish, possibly Basque, company that emerged in the ear ly to mid 80s. it manufactured bottom-to-middle-range gear sets, some hubs, and other nick-nacks. The bottom end gear set was made very largely of Del rin plastic and was very chunky in its appearance. Not elegant at all, the gears worked quite well until the road grit got into the pivots. Nick's fro nt mech is from the upper end gear set, and is clearly a copy of Campagnolo?zeus designs. When I started typing this email I could not remem ber the name of the other Spanish bike accessory company, but its name has just come back to me. The company was TRIPLEX..that manufactured some Zeus copies. These were very cheap andn reasoanbly reliable except for the rear parallelogram which was a little fragile and prone to twisting off. My assu mption is that the TXIMISTA brand emerged from the ashes of the TRIPLEX com pany..perhaps by buying up the tooling. Perhaps TXIMISTA means PHOENIX in B asque or Catalan.

The latest of Nick's treasures, the Stronglight "Bianchi" chainset is qu ite a find in many ways. I have a couple like it but without the Italian na me. Until recently the chainring design was unknown to me...and I have been told that it is the 49B pattern.

Can anyone confirm this or clarify please?

Norris Lockley, Settle UK

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