Good point about Lambert, but I'm not sure if anything other than their frames were actually made in house.
I've always felt that the bars / stem / quasi-Campag seatpost / pedals / hubs / brakes were probably outsourced and made to a (low) price by subcontractors - but I could be wrong. Anyone know better?
Lambert / Viscounts have been discussed on the list before of course, and I've always been a real admirer of the build quality of the lugless frames - and even the famous 'Death Fork' (! - see below*) - but the rest of it was more or less a load of badly finished kak (sorry if this offends!).
Particularly rotten were the rims which seemed to be made from jelly, and the pedals which ran in sintered bronze plain bearings - mine fell apart in about three months!
I rode a Viscount Aerospace (as Lambert became) for a number of years, stripped of all the rubbish and fitted out with mostly Shimano kit.
To my certain knowledge I raced in two editions of the Three Peaks Cyclo Cross on this bike complete with Death Fork with absolutely no problems* - and rode it in the UK Veterans National Cyclo cross Championship as late as 1996...
I still have this F&F. However, mainly because of observations here on the list, on Sheldon Brown's website and indeed on "CR Main", I have now removed the ally forks and replaced them with an off-topic pair of chromed steel Columbus Sintesas, and am about to give the old girl another lease of life as a fixed wheeler!
I can't decide whether to sell the forks (so I'd be v.interested in any sudden surge in market values please - only joking Dale!) - or perhaps mount them on a plinth and as a display over my fireplace as one of the apparently few "Non-Death" Lambert / Viscount forks still in captivity!
Ian Briggs LUTON UK
-----Original Message----- From: classicrendezvous-request@bikelist.org To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Sent: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 7.59PM Subject: Classicrendezvous Digest, Vol 49, Issue 81
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Today's Topics:
1. Constructeur? A frame builder who makes a few additional parts? (Tom Sanders)
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Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 14:38:15 -0500 From: "Tom Sanders" <tsan7759142@sbcglobal.net> To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org> Subject: [CR]Constructeur? A frame builder who makes a few additional parts? Message-ID: <003701c73b38$32d8b9e0$384eff44@ts> Content-Type: text/plain;charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Precedence: list Message: 1
It seems a slippery slope to use the term Constructeur as anything but a descriptive term...it just does not seem to work well to define narrowly any group of builders or exclude others. Mike Barry, Brian Baylis, Peter Weigle and Bruce Gordon all make extra parts ...are they Constructeurs or bike builders who make some extra parts? Which parts would qualify one as one or the other? Art Stump and George Omelenchuck made parts that Singer and Herse did not, I believe. Stump and Omelenchuck probably lacked the time to build very many bikes this way...Art once told me he had build 18 and I only know of three or four Omelenchucks...If he made a dozen bikes I'd be amazed. More like machinists who built bikes. I think they are not different, only have different talents and interests...and that semi-wonderful French terminology. In the end they are all bike builders and we get to slipping, once again, into such discussions as how many angels can dance on the head of a Campagnolo drop out screw...you can tell it's winter and folks are spending a lot of time at their computers... :^) Tom Sanders Lansing, Mi (4 degrees here last night) USA
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End of Classicrendezvous Digest, Vol 49, Issue 81 *************************************************