Are we overlooking the possibility that the bicycles were either made with the wrong tubes - either accidentally, or deliberately?
I realize that nearly everyone on the CR list would be too honest to do something like this intentionally, but I can imagine a bicycle manufacturer who either got tube stock mixed up, or faced the dilemma of either using the wrong tubing, or not being able to build certain models.
Unless someone here has evidence, it's all just speculation anyways, so why not consider other plausible explanations?
Cheers, and wishes for a very happy 2008,
John Barry
Mechanicsburg, PA, USA
> At 10:41 PM 28/12/2007 -0600, John Thompson wrote:
>
> >Seamless tubing is produced by piercing a solid
> piece of steel with a
> >mandrel, and repeated drawing through dies until
> the final shape and
> >dimensions are achieved.
> >
> >Some seamed tubing, e.g. Reynolds 501, True Temper,
> etc, start as strips
> >rolled and welded into tubes and drawn through
> mandrels to obliterate
> >the weld seam, but AFAIK, 753/531, and most other
> high-end tubing was
> >produced as truly seamless.
>
> That has always been my understanding. Reynolds
> always made a big deal of
> how they did this and butted the tubes. If a cycle
> manufacturer was
> receiving "531" from Reynolds in the 1970s that
> appeared to be seamed, it
> could only be that the manufacturer had pressured
> them for a lower price
> and agreed to go easy on inspection so 501 could be
> substituted. With the
> huge volumes of tubing used by Raleigh, Reynolds
> couldn't afford to supply
> it at cost or with minimal margin. These days such
> demands are made
> routinely by big companies like GM and the suppliers
> either find a way to
> conform or lose the contract and close up shop. All
> the customer was
> looking for was the right sticker and very few
> actually stressed the frames
> to the point where it made any difference.
>
> John Betmanis
> Woodstock, Ontario
> Canada
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