Snip -
> Heres another Tack, Go to your local Car dealer and see if
> they have any specialty tools for a 15-20 year old car
>
>
> BOB FREITAS
> MILL VALLEY, CA USA
end of snip
This is an unfair comparison. First of all a 15-20 year old car in general does not require speciality tools that modern cars don't require, but do require special parts which are unreasonable for a car company to be expected to keep in stock. Junk yards are the solution to that one. If there are special tools required for an older car, than that hardly applies to a simple tool which was required for almost ALL Italian bicycles manufactured up until twenty years ago. Unlike an old car, an old bicycle can easily have a useful lifespan of three decades, four decades, five decades or more. There are forty year old bicycles I have run into that require nothing more sophisticated to get them up to par than a new chain, cabling, tape, hoods, brake blocks, tubes and tires and some grease with some good hands and a few hundred dollars worth of tools. Most specialty bicycle tools have substitutes that can be found at your local hardware store. There are exceptions but few. The obvious specialty bike tools for classic bikes for which there are no exceptions are taps for the bb, fork threads and pedal threads. You can get by without a headset press, dropout alignment tools, wheelbuilding stand, third hand, fourth hand, pin wrench, or fixed cup remover but if you need to retap a reverse threaded bb you need the correct tool. My prediction is that some half century old Italian bikes will outlast their modern carbon fiber counterparts. A hundred years from now which bike would a savvy bike mechanic have a better chance with - an old classic Italian or a CF bike requiring a specialty bb cartridge replacement and an x-ray machine to determine if the carbon fiber layers are starting to dangerously de-laminate?
Garth Libre in Miami Fl.