First off, I will state something that I have already written to Jan privately in the past. Whenever anybody tries to reinforce the 'value' of their opinion by including a title in a post to a forum (ie. editor bicycle quarterly in Jan's case), they should be able to back up everything with facts and not opinions and should be held to a much higher degree of scrutiny. This because any nonsense that they might post is likely to be taken by less well-informed people to be 'gospel'. I therefore think that Chuck's questioning of the comments are not only valid but required. As you will be able to see in this and further posts, I also find that Jan falls very short of the documentation required to confirm his claims (also read Marcus Hellman's recent post). It is furthermore not up to an individual forum member to come up with research data that will be used by a 'for profit' entity like Jan's publication. I am sure that many people would be perfectly willing to do the required research if commissioned to do so. It does however seem that BQ is typical of many shoestring publishing operations, in as much as they are not willing to fund new research up front. They are only willing to pay for research prepared on spec by the writer. Unfortunately, if the findings do not correspond with those that the publication would like to espouse, they are simply ignored and the one who did all the research is SOL, no matter the quality of the research.
Now for the critique of Jan's claims.
Jan wrote:
"The tread of a 1960 Cinelli S.C. with first-generation Campagnolo cranks (1958 model) is 139 mm. The tread of a 1965 Cinelli S.C. with 1965 Campagnolo cranks is 132 mm. The early cranks themselves are 3 mm thicker each than the later ones (15 vs. 12 mm)."
What are the BB shell widths involved? Are you looking at an original bike? How can you document the originality of the components and the bike? How did you determine the year of the two bikes? How have you documented the year of production? Are all the components original? How have you documented this? Where did you measure the thickness of the cranks?
Just so that you know, the thickness of the cranks is not uniform. It varies along the length of the crank arm. The redesign from your 1958 model Campagnolo crank to the 1965 model crank was complete. While there is a minimal thinning of the thickness (contrary to what you write, it is not 3 mm but rather varies between less than one mm and 2.5 mm), there is a much greater difference in the fore-aft cross-section (it varies from 4 to 6 mm). To therefore put major importance on the change in the thickness without even mentioning the far greater change in fore-aft section seems to show poor scientific methodology. The main variation in the thickness is furthermore a logical result of the removal of the inboard pedal hole cap and the corresponding transposition of the threads inward. You also neglect to mention that the length of the pedal threads was also increased. A much more logical explanation for the redesign was to improve the overall performance and strength of the combination. More meat was put on the crank where it was needed for power transmission and crank strength and removed where possible for production cost and weight reduction. You yourself note that the breakages that occurred with the early design seemed to cease among the pros after the redesign.
Steven Maasland
Moorestown, NJ
USA