At 6:34 AM +0200 4/9/08, Amir Avitzur wrote:
>A 50's French bike of mine came with all-French parts except for F.B. hubs.
>
>As the chrome had peeled off, and the barrel rusted, I got a replacement
>hub.
>
>The rear-hub is french threaded.
>
>How common was that?
> F.B. hubs on French bikes?
> French threads on F.B. hubs?
Very common. FB hubs were considered the high-end of hubs in the 1930s, together with Maxi. (The C.A.R. were in yet another league, but hard to find and tremendously expensive.) FB advertised widely, including some early ads that claimed "Made in France." (It appears they dropped the "Made in France" pretty quickly, though, but they listed an address in Cognin, which later also was the address for Campagnolo France.) For the French market, the company was called "Brivio Freres" instead of "Fratelli Brivio."
FB even made special tandem hubs, with 105 mm front and about 130 mm rear spacing - see the Hurtu tandem in Bicycle Quarterly Vol. 2, No. 3. I believe that these were sold only in France.
After the war, several makers, including Alex Singer, used FB hubs in the technical trials, as they were lighter than Maxi-Car.
Of course, all those hubs for the French market were French-threaded.
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
140 Lakeside Ave #C
Seattle WA 98122
http://www.bikequarterly.com