The short-comings of Lambert (and then Viscount, because they inherited a huge amount of stock/work in progress) components is gradually being documented from several of us who were at Viscount at the time. One of the 'investors' in Lambert was Copal Foundries who made gravity die cast aluminum components and they used this production method ('Gravair') to make cranks, brake arms, seat pillars, stems and forks castings. I say investors only because they joined the queue of companies providing working capital in the form of stock, which ultimately was never paid for. The castings were machined either in-house or at local contractors. The cranks, therefore, are no better, no worse than any other gravity die-cast components of the period which may also have used the expression 'melt-forged'. As for machining angles, threads etc, yes, they were/are/may be all over the place. I don't recall breaking cranks being a big problem. But most of the bikes were sold to the USA, via Yamaha and quality feedback was erratic. Not over helpful. We have had to show caution when documenting the story because none of us wish to be sued by other survivors for being too critical. John Purser, still alive in Sudbury, Great Britain
Message: 9 Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:25:39 -0800 From: verktyg <verktyg@aol.com> Subject: Re: [CR] Marrying cousins To: Classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Message-ID: <4D630283.8020302@aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
John,
Most cultures have taboos of some sorts against inbreeding but since TA and Lambert cranks aren't even in the same species....
I recall reading somewhere that Lambert used a bastard angle on their crank arms and BB spindles. Maybe someone can confirm.
That the bastardy of Lambert products has been confirmed many times over; here's some other bits of information. Lambert used 5/16-22TPI or 5/16-26TPI crank arm bolts. They also used a 7/8-20 thread on the extractor so that you may run into problems when you try to remove the arm.
Add to that, Lambert had a poor track record for quality: example their death forks! I think that I also remember hearing about a high failure rate for the crank arms. Someone please confirm this one too.
Regards,
Chas. Colerich Oakland, CA USA
john strizek wrote:
> Have any of you had experience in filing or otherwise putting a taper in > a Lambert Crank Arm? I have several sets of Lamberts and true TA > cranksets. I still have an orphan TA drive-side and an orphan off-side > Lambert Arm. I would like to marry them but the Lambert is not > cooperating. How do I solve this inbred dilemma?
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