I would like to add that part of the H20 BZ's had to do with tubing
thickness and strength.
If you look at many of the older bikes then you will see aplethora of BZ's
all over the frames ie. John Waners's 1927 German Bismarck with the rear
brake cable thru the top tube!
But, those tubes were fairly heavy and/or thicker walled.
Many of those frames started breaking when the tubings got lighter and were
still being hard brazed.
Once they started using more silver in/with the brass and lower temperatures
with the thin wall tubes then those problems began to alleviate and Bz's
were added all over the place again.
That's why Columbus had to come in with rifling to strengthen the tubes.
The chrome moly wasn't as tough as Reynold's manganese moly
and the hard brass weakened it so too many frames cracked.
It's generalized but you all get the drift.
Vitus steel tubes were OK, but when I was in Europe, the general word on the
cobbles was that Vitus was OK but only had from 1/3 to 1/2 the road life as
Reynolds, so was used on the domestic market or on lower pricepoint models
in the line of the various companies.
It also depended on where you lived in our country.
Hydration varied from region to region. We may only need one bottle for a 50
mile race in Chicago, but need 3 in Pheonix.
That's a hard one to quantify, and people adapted to the needs of their
area.
Darwin had a point.
As mentioned, people didn't hydrate as much years ago.
The advances in nutrition and fluid research/discovery brought about just as
much improvement as did modern equipment.
Ted Ernst
Palos Verdes Estates
CA USA
> Many of the members of this group have been enthusiasts for several
> decades. I got into it in the early 70's as the boom crested out at the
> coasts. Fads took a while to get to the midwest back then. Anyway in the
> early 70's attitudes still held firmly to the belief that braze ons
> weakened the frame. Cinelli, considered the best at the time, only
> allowed a brazed on chain stay boss. Everything else was clamps. Ditto
> with the ubiquitous Paramount, though some models had outer brake cable
> stops on the top tube. There were many others relying on clamps to mount
> components and accessories.
>
> I don't recall if any one builder put it out but by around 1974 I noticed
> frame makers were adding one brazed on bottle mounts. In the US one was
> enough. There was a culture of criterium racing, which was often
> completed after 2 hours or so. One can get away with a single bottle on a
> 2-4 hour ride depending on the air temp.
>
> It was the 1980's that made the second bottle mount common on racing bikes
> and three bottle mounts popular on touring bikes (remember the early to
> mid 80's touring bike boom? it happened about the same time mountain
> bikes got going, but touring bikes crashed after in 85 or so).
>
>>From the racing side there were rarely significant levels of support to
>>keep a racer hydrated. Anyone who could find helpers to hand up mussettes
>>with water and food were considered either super organized or so good to
>>have an entourage in support. Road racing (competitions lasting more than
>>4 hours) was pretty rare except for District and National Championships.
>>Companies were experimenting with supplements. Does anyone remember
>>E.R.G. (Electrolyte Replacement with Glucose)?, nasty taste but it worked
>>far better than plain water. The secrets of the European race teams were
>>tightly held and generally unavailable to the american based riders. The
>>Euros knew a lot from trial and error. Ted Ernst has commented on the
>>american learning curve in great detail. We're privileged to have him in
>>our midsts. With short events and little support enthusiasts could get by
>>with one bottle. I wonder what the attitudes were for those hearty souls
>>who did the 200 mile events like
> the Davis Double Century, the Grand Tour, The Hilly Hundred, TOSRV in the
> 60's and 70's before we knew what we know now.
>
> The addition of second braze on mount was an indication of the changing of
> accepted values. Cycling had been steeped in tradition and the strongly
> held beliefs went away slowly.
>
> Todd Teachout
> Hercules, CA