Mark should be neither surprised nor concerned that he has found a wood bung lodged in his fork crowand steering column joint.
It was very a common practice to bang these bungs into place and it was held to be a very good one. The bung, often made out of beech or oak, is fitted to stiffen up the joint and to provide a sort of insurance policy in the event of the brazed joint breaking ie the blades and the front wheel would be less likely to depart from your bicycle on a journey of their own. The bungs can often be quite long and therefore intended to give the rider some thinking time in the event of a breakage of the metal.
I have many French frames, and almost all of the better quality ones, including all of the Pro ones such as Sauvage - Lejeune, Peugeots, CNC etc have wood bungs. It was also common practice for large manufacturers such as Motobecane, even on their lower range bikes, to fit steel bugs, these usually taking the form of a thick-wall tube with a split in it to allow the tube to compress on entry into the crown.
In the country that gave the cycling world the high-end front fork with little nibs on the drop-outs to prevent the wheel from accidently dropping out if the stupid rider didn't click over the QR lever tightly enough, and which introduced the rest of the world to the now wide-spread disease known as Litigation Phobia..any manufacturer exporting their goods to that country would make every effort to avoid litigation in the event of an accident...or more sensibly to avoid the accident in the first place. Prevention is always better than the cure. I know that when Falcon obtained its last big order for steel frames to the States, they refused to use a certain model of Cinelli cast fork crown, because some of these had shown signs of embrittlement after brazing and on cooling, and the management of Falcon were worried about breakages in use.
OK i was just jesting a little...the bungs were there because it was just "best practice" - for obvious reasons.
Norris Lockley Settle Uk
---------------------------------
Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.