My (albeit limited) experience with triples as a bicycle mechanic in the mid 1970s was that the better front derailleurs available at the time could handle them well enough, but not necessarily under fast-shifts where they'd often drop the chain off the chainrings. Maybe acceptable for a tourist, but not something a competitive cyclist wants to contend with in a race. If you live in flat country (as I do), the need for a wide range of gears sort of goes out the window. My pre-1983 Ciocc has a 47-inch low gear - plenty low for this neck of the woods even for a 55 year-old fart like me. Footnote - more gears aren't necessarily better if the resulting combinations are duplicates or hard-to-get-to-extremes. Steve Whitting
"The Ciocc Cat"
Prairieville, Louisiana USA
Website at http://ciocc-cat.angelfire.com/
From: Kurt Sperry <haxixe@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [CR] Dawes Red Feather bike To: "Peter Brueggeman" <4peebee@peterbrueggeman.com> Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Date: Saturday, February 6, 2010, 4:13 PM
What's up with so many English bikes not fitting front derailleurs? Seems like an odd choice to say the least, needlessly limiting the practical utility of the bike. I guess they wanted to make them look like TT racers.
Of course I never understood double chainrings when three would serve 99% of riders better for the same reasoning.
Kurt Sperry Bellingham, Washington USA
On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 1:07 PM, Peter Brueggeman
<4peebee@peterbrueggeman.com> wrote:
> A "Red Feather" Dawes on UK eBay.
>
> http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/
>
> or http://tinyurl.com/
>
> Nice seat tube graphics! You can see those interesting pump pegs mentioned,
> which doubled as brake cable stops.
>
> Peter Brueggeman
> La Jolla California USA
> 4peebee(at)peterbrueggeman.com