Greg,
Aelle was near if not at the bottom of Columbus' offerings.
Here's a description from the 1980 Columbus spec sheet:
"AELLE: Set for amateur and touring cyclists, built of cold-drawn, microalloyed-steel thin-wall tubing which makes it especially lightweight. CMn Steel - Weight: 2345"
*http://www.equusbicycle.com/bike/columbus/columbus.htm*
The spec sheet shows 0.8mm wall thickness straight gage main tubes. I think that maybe I've seen some bikes with butted Aelle tubing (maybe just seller's BS).
CMn Steel says it all: "microalloyed-steel" - read low alloy steel carbon manganese steel probably similar to Tange Mangalloy and some of the pedestrian Vitus tubing types.
The next better grade Gara was made of Cro Mo - Chrome Molybdenum alloy steel. Gara was listed with the same wall thicknesses as Aelle except for 0.1mm thinner wall thickness in the seat stays.
Carbon manganese steel probably has ~15-20% less tensile strength than chrome molybdenum alloy steel. Also lower resistance to fatigue.
Those spec didn't necessarily make it a bad choice for it's intended use.
Higher alloys steels can withstand more cycles of stress. The higher strength steels can be drawn thinner to make lighter tubing while still maintaining adequate strength.
Chas. Colerich Oakland, CA USA
gear@xmission.com wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> George's outing of the ebay Legnano(?) has prompted me to pose a
> question to the list. I've seen a number of ebay frames/bikes in recent
> months touting Aelle as everything from a top level to racing to
> professional tubeset. Has there been a change in the way this set is
> viewed? When I was selling frames and racing bikes, Aelle was an entry
> level performance bike at best. It was usually available on the more
> affordable complete bikes offered and rarely did we see an Aelle,
> Cromor, Zeta, or Tretubi etc frame offered as a frameset only.
>
> Am I delirious?
>
> Greg Overton
> who has passed on a lot of 50 dollar Aelle frames at VeloSwap in
> Denver, Colorado