Counterpoint - Shimano and Campy “Design Blunders”

Introduction

An alert reader sent me an article from “road.cc” magazine that isn’t very recent but is timeless: “Retro: Shimano and Campagnolo’s greatest design blunders.” I found the story interesting and entertaining, but I take issue with a few of its points. (As a blogger, this is kind of my job.)  If you’re a bike geek, read on. If not, bail out now and go back to your Sudoku, your yoga, or your Arduino, so you can feel all superior.

Campagnolo Delta brakes

Delta brakes were the “road.cc” article’s headliner. “Looked great, worked indifferently, weighed lots,” we’re told. To be honest, I’m not in love with the looks:

I never got to try these myself; even though most of my friends and I had pretty sweet bikes by 1986, we couldn’t afford top-of-the-line C-Record. Actually, at that time I had a full Dura-Ace equipped Team Miyata and a Campy Super Record equipped Mercian, so I could have swung the Delta brakes had I really wanted them. But I was growing disenchanted with Campagnolo’s sudden spasm of innovation, which brought us lots of low-end components, bizarre designs, and eventually the Syncro indexed shifter, which was about as well-made and well-received as the movie “Gigli.”

Though I’d heard Delta brakes didn’t work that well, I sure don’t remember seeing any footage of riders totally stacking because of them. Back then, cyclists (at least, my friends and I) cared mostly about brand, weight, durability, and serviceability—we could forgive less-than-perfect function. For example, it was widely acknowledged even in the early ‘80s that Dura-Ace derailleurs actually shifted better than Campy, but most people didn’t really care—they loved how durable, serviceable, and no-nonsense Campy was. Meanwhile, it was well known that Suntour Superbe Pro brakes, with their weird orange-brown pads, only worked well in dry conditions, but nobody seemed to begrudge them this.

Where I can’t agree with “road.cc” is their calling Delta brakes a design blunder. Sure, these brakes were a nightmare for mechanics, but couldn’t we say the same thing about Sturmey-Archer 3-speed internal-geared hubs, which were phenomenally popular for decades? Okay, I’ll grant that Delta brakes were possibly the first factory recall Campagnolo ever had. But to knock them for their overcomplicated design is to wrongly assume that their main job was to provide optimum braking performance to pro racers. That’s kind of backwards: it was the pro teams’ job to use and promote whatever their sponsors gave them. And while these brakes were heavy didn’t work that well, they had one thing totally going for them: they were distinctive.

I challenge anybody to deny that the Delta brakeset was the most recognizable bike component anyone ever made. You could spot them a mile away. And since pro road teams didn’t generally mix and match components, the Delta brakes signified that the whole bike was Campy-equipped. This was important for Campagnolo because after years of dominance (as of 1986, 16 of the previous 20 Tours de France had been won on Campagnolo equipment), they were suddenly being seriously challenged by totally reengineered Dura-Ace and Mavic components. Lots of budget-conscious riders had been riding Suntour components for years, but now Campagnolo was battling to maintain leadership at the high end. (Over time they have certainly lost their prominence; amazingly, only 2 of the last 20 Tours de France were won on Campy-equipped bikes.)

In the mid-’80s, for Campagnolo to show the casual observer they were still on top demanded that their gear totally stand out, and at this job the Delta brake did brilliantly. Check out this famous cycling photo:

It’s plainly obvious what components Stephen Roche was riding when he won the 1987 World Championship road race. Adding the logo on this Campagnolo ad was almost beside the point:

Who cares if highly skilled pro racers had a harder time braking? Using Delta brakes enhanced their ability to showcase their sponsor’s product line, which was their job, after all. To the extent this improved sales for Campagnolo, the revenue growth was probably in the rapidly growing lower-end groups like Victory, Triomphe, and Athena, which had traditional brakes that worked fine. In other words, the crummy design of Delta brakes probably helped the company without hurting anyone.

When Campagnolo finally retired the Delta brakes and needed something else to differentiate their C-Record brakeset from lower models, they gave it a fake blue gemstone in the center nut and called them Cobalto.

These were a big step backward aesthetically, particularly because the gemstone wasn’t a real stone—it was a cheesy-looking fake, affixed to the (flat-topped) center nut with adhesive. In other words, it was basically a sticker, and these stickers tended to fall off. I remember ribbing a friend about all the Cracker Jack he was going to have to buy to find another set of Cobalto “stones.”

Actual braking be damned … the Delta brakes at least did one thing well.

Shimano Dyna-Drive pedals

I also cannot agree with “road.cc” that Dyna-Drive pedals were a blunder. I loved these pedals and used them until 1992 (i.e., 8 years after they were discontinued). Alexi Grewal loved them too, and in fact used them on the otherwise Suntour-equipped bike he rode to victory in the 1984 Olympic road race. (Since they weren’t standard issue for his team bike, he probably paid for his Dyna-Drive setup—pedals, crankset, and bottom bracket—out of his own pocket.)

Why did I like Dyna-Drive pedals? Is it because, as “road.cc” attests, they cornered better? Naw, that was never the point. The benefit was that they enabled you to lower your saddle by two centimeters, for better aerodynamics. For a tall guy, it was great—you could get a better draft. I finally didn’t feel as much like a big gawky dork sticking out above the peloton. (I know I’ve left myself wide open here … please add your insult in the Comments section below.)

Dyna-Drive pedals also offered an adjustable toe clip, which no other pedal did at that time, and they were light. And yeah, they also did have better cornering clearance (especially the Dura-Ace AX version). Meanwhile, by having no axle, these pedals put your foot right at the axis of rotation, instead of above it. This just felt better. Why? Hard to describe, but think of a unicycle … pretty ungainly, right? Now think of one of those “giraffe” unicycles, where the rider is way up in the air, with his bottom bracket at least a couple feet above the wheel axle. Waaaay more unstable. That’s kind of how my foot felt on a traditional pedal, compared to the Dyna-Drive.

Another benefit of this no-axle arrangement is that it was really easy to get your foot into the toe clip. Maybe this wasn’t a huge deal, but if you ever rode with toe clips you know how tricky that could be, giving the toe clip just the right downward tap to spin the pedal around so you could jam your foot in at the right point in the spin. Screwing this up at the start of a criterium was a perennial danger, and I never screwed it up with the Dyna-Drives.

Yeah, the bearings were hard to adjust, and needed servicing more often than, say, a Campy pedal, but compared to overhauling a Dura-Ace Octalink bottom bracket, or seating a new tubeless mountain bike tire, or truing a modern wheel with its paucity of spokes, this was really no big deal. I was such a vocal fan of this system, my nickname on the UC Santa Barbara cycling team was “Dana-Drive.”

(I do wholeheartedly agree with the comment “road.cc” made about how pedals, with their ubiquitous 9/16” thread diameter, are “the last true standard in bike parts.” Check out these three pedals, from the 1960s-era monstrosity to one of the last high-end non-clipless pedals to a fairly current Dura-Ace … any of them could be installed just fine on my old three-speed’s cottered crank.)

Shimano Biopace chainrings

Don’t get me wrong, I always thought Biopace was a completely lame innovation. But when “road.cc” describes it as “ill-fated” I have to protest. This is one of those products that is so universally reviled in retrospect, nobody wants to admit having ever embraced it. It’s kind of the bike industry equivalent of the expression “YOLO.” Everybody groans at how utterly stupid that expression was, and yet it was insanely popular—for a time. As the “Huffington Post” reported, “the expression ... quickly went from a simple motivational phrase to a social death wish.” In contrast, Biopace, though similarly denounced by bike veterans now, was hugely popular for almost a decade, from 1983 to 1993. I worked at bike shops for much of this period, and I can tell you, Biopace chainrings (and their down-market cousin, SR OvalTech) were everywhere. They were a real pestilence.

Why did I hate them? Well, for one thing, they made adjusting a front derailleur really hard. Derailleurs of that era were barely up to the task to begin with, and setting them high enough to clear the tallest tooth created a big gap for other parts of the chainring. Given other common problems certain bike models had, like bad chain lines, getting the front derailleur to shift well with Biopace rings became a real chore.

The other problem with these stupid oval rings was that they put me in a tough moral position. When customers came to the shop looking to buy a set (or, as happened surprisingly often, using Biopace as an excuse to buy a whole new bike), I had to pretend to support the idea. “My doctor says these will reduce knee strain!” a customer would say, and I had to offer some noncommittal response like, “Well, you should always listen to your doctor!” rather than express my true opinion, which was that Biopace was complete malarkey.

I never actually owned a set of these chainrings. I’d just jump on my friend’s bike and ride around a bit, noting how awful the pedaling felt, and particularly how exaggerated the effect was in the little chainring vs. the middle and outer ones. Why should this have been the case? If the effect of this shape is good, wouldn’t you dial in the same improved pedaling characteristic for all three rings? It never made any sense to me. (I think there were limitations in what could be economically produced.) My intuition told me to avoid these silly chainrings, and even when a new bike came with them, I’d incur extra expense to put round rings on there.

So yeah, I completely agree that Biopace was lame—but “ill-fated”? As with the Campagnolo Delta brakes, we have to concede that bike component companies are for-profit corporations. Their job is to persuade people to replace their perfectly good equipment with new (also perfectly good) equipment. In an ideal world, everything new the industry came up with would be demonstrably better, but innovation just doesn’t happen that fast. If companies don’t keep that hype- and gimmick-driven money coming in, they can’t afford the R&D that produces significant improvements. When I ride my modern mountain bike, with its carbon frame, hydraulic brakes, and super-crisp shifting, I’m pretty blown away … and if this technology was funded on the backs of suckers who wasted money on the drivetrain equivalent of snake oil, I can’t bring myself to care. Given its long period of cash production, to write Biopace off as “ill-fated” is a bit of a stretch.

Will oval chainrings ever make a comeback? Of course, so long as there’s money to be made. Certain Team Sky riders have used them, such as Chris Froome. I think oval chainrings’ main benefit to him is the ability they confer to poo-poo accusations that his power stats are “not normal.” He (and others) claim that oval chainrings will cause the power readings to read anywhere from 4% to 6% high. This is pure bullshit of course, just like the myth that Froome is clean. All this being said, I have no issue with oval rings enjoying a resurgence … after all, the industry can use the money, and I don’t work at bike shops anymore.

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Dyna-Drive - Letter to an Old Gearhead

Introduction

Recently, I got into a long, rich e-mail exchange with a guy named Kevin, who is my friend John’s older brother.  I know almost nothing about Kevin because back when we all lived in Boulder, we were teenagers, and no teenager ever has anything to do with his kid brother’s friends.  But Kevin is restoring a 1983 Team Miyata, which instantly provided enough rapport for us to practically become pen pals.

That’s where you, vicious reader, come in.  (You didn’t think I was going to call you “gentle reader,” did you?)  Because I don’t know Kevin, he could be any 40-something collector of excellent old bikes and their paraphernalia.  If that’s you, read on.  If that’s not you, what’s wrong with you?  Racing bicycles of the early eighties are far cooler than fantasy football, online gaming, etc., and the sooner you realize it the better.  (If you love old bikes but are a young dude who can’t stand the thought of anybody being in his forties, click here instead.)

Dyna-Drive – Letter to an Old Gearhead

It’s been awhile ... maybe you thought I forgot about your Team Miyata restoration and the parts I offered you.  Not so.  And even if I did forget, my wife would’ve reminded me.  I told her about the project, explaining it in a way that would interest her (“I’m giving away some bike stuff”) and she asked, “Does this guy need any whole bicycles?”

So, I finally went out to The Box to find out if I really do have the parts I promised you.  Sorry it took me so long, but hauling out The Box is no small matter.  It’s buried under a bunch of other stuff in the garage, and the garage itself (a small one, built to accommodate a Model-T Ford) is like a jack-in-the-box, where when you pull out one thing, the top pops off and suddenly there’s crap everywhere and it looks like the home of a hoarder, so you can barely thread your way through it and then there’s a TV crew out there in the driveway wanting to film an installment of “Filthy Hoarders Bay Area:  Bike-Induced Squalor.” 

I also have to be braced emotionally for such archeological projects.  I start to get sentimental because whenever I blow up the garage, I come across relics of my daughters’ recent past that remind me how fast they’re growing.  I’m chucking aside new winter boots, winter boots that won’t fit anymore, little coats they barely got to wear, and then the rag bag, which is actually a box, which is always overflowing and is 90% kids’ garments.   I guess there’s some guilt there because we could have given these garments to the Goodwill, except they’re all stained because my kids are, apparently, slobs.  So I’m like, “Dang, Lindsay was wearing this dress only a month ago.”  The way the years have flown by, it’s like the kids just got here, but they’ve already got one foot (each) out the door.

Below the rag “bag” is the New Bike Stuff Box, which is a Huggies diaper box, so I feel guilty about that.  Should’ve used cloth.  In the New Bike Stuff Box are gobs of new cogs, new chains, new cleats, new Conti 4K tires, and little-used 4Ks I took off my bike so I could put on new tires for Everest Challenge but then afterward was too tired to put the old tires back on, and all of this is enough to make me drool over how well equipped I am for all the miles I have yet to ride, but of course there’s some guilt there, too, because I have so much, and there are people in this world riding Forté (i.e., house-brand) tires, or fricking Ultegra, or low-end Campy, or worse, some of them are on cobbled-together mixed-part mixed-vintage bikes like all those poor Europeans had who dropped my ass on Alpe d’Huez despite my big fancy American equipment and attitude.

So then I get to the second diaper box, which is The Box itself.  The Box is fricking heavy, with the accumulation of decades of bike stuff, and I dreaded hauling it out because my back is currently in the thrown-out state.  I don’t know how it got here.  I sat down too quickly, or got up too quickly, or sat too long, or blasphemed too many times, I have no idea.  A buddy of mine threw his back out putting on a sock.  It sucks being old, but I guess the alternative (i.e., being dead) is no better.  I wish you could have heard the wounded-animal noise I made hefting The Box onto a rubbish bin so I could rifle through it.  (Did I say “rubbish bin” instead of “trash can” just to sound British?  Of course.)

The stuff in that Box ... it’s just amazing.  It’s like the parts are copulating in there.  I always come across stuff I cannot account for, like (in this case) an extra Dura-Ace Dyna-Drive crankset.  I know I promised you some chainrings off this crankset, but since then I verified with my brother Bryan that I had actually put my extra Dyna-Drive crankset on his old Team Miyata a couple decades ago.  (My original Dyna-Drive crankset is on Full Slab.)  So I thought Bryan was going to have to send you the chainrings you need, which means you’d almost certainly never get them, because he has more kids than I do and doesn’t even have time to read his e-mail—and hasn’t, in fact, even read any of our glorious Miyata restoration e-mails, hasn’t even stumbled across the link you included to the treasure trove of old Miyata catalogs online where he could drool over the very catalog that once hawked his very bike.

But lo and behold, I do have a Dyna-Drive crank from which to cannibalize chainrings.  Sweet!  And that’s not even the weirdest thing I found in The Box.  I also found a cadence transmitter for a Polar bike computer.  How is this in here?!  I’ve never owned a Polar device in my life, and I’ve never been a big fan of measuring cadence.  I do have a cadence mech now—I couldn’t outrun such nerdy technology forever—and it’s kind of depressing sometimes when I’m slogging up Lomas Cantadas in my lowest gear, which is shamefully low due to the unholy combination of a compact crank and a 27-tooth rear cog, and my cadence is in the 40s.  At that point can I even call myself an athlete?

I’ve got a slew of corn cobs in The Box, even a Regina which is weird because I’ve never owned a chain that’s even compatible with Regina.  Just all kinds of stuff and it takes a mighty, mighty long time to go through it all looking for specific stuff, especially since I keep getting sucked in, inspecting this or that part closely, not just because it’s cool-looking (which of course it all is), but because time after time the picture gets all wavy, like how old TV shows used to indicate that a dream sequence or flashback was beginning, and suddenly this isn’t just a 53-tooth Mavic chainring, this is the chainring off Pete’s old Rossin, the chainring we all called “the working man’s chainring” because it was so manly, so Sean-Kelly-like, because at that time having a 53 was unusual and was the equivalent of an amp that goes up to 11.  If you were willing to fork out big bucks for that extra tooth, it meant you really cared about going fast.  (As juniors, we had gear restrictions, and the 53x15 was actually still legal, whereas a 52x14 was not.)  This led me to ponder whether or not it’s pathetic that as teenagers my brothers and friends and I talked enough about any specific chainring to have to name it.  Well, maybe we were, but at least we were disciplined, sportive teenagers who weren’t glued to screens all the time.

Then I found myself looking at a Suntour Sprint rear mech, which was on the Sanwa I bought in 1986 from this Brazilian twerp whose goal in life was apparently to go as long as possible without actually working, no matter how much freeloading this required, and no matter how many belongings he had to sell.  He tried to sell that Sanwa to me for months, and my bartering tactic—“I don’t need another bike, and I don’t even like that bike, get it away, I don’t want it”—was so ruthlessly effective that I finally got the bike for like $140 and gave it to my brother Max, who, years later, was sprinting all-out on it, on the Broadway bike path, when the frame snapped in half and he stacked so hard he got a case of whiplash that bothers him to this day.

So, yeah, I’ve got original Dura-Ace Dyna-Drive chainrings for you, but oddly the inner chainring is a 39, which definitely was not stock on that crankset.  Nobody was using 39s until about 1987 or 1988.  That crank is a 1982.  Oddly, even though it’s newer than the crank, that 39 is really, really worn.  Kind of a wave-shape as well.  Very likely to skip.  Look:

See that chainring next to it?  It’s practically new.  It’s got at least 10,000 miles left in it.  Also, being a 42, it’s more appropriate for your restoration.  But though it’s Dura-Ace, it’s not Dyna-Drive, so in that sense it’s not very authentic.

So what else did I find?  The Dura-Ace AX pedals are in better shape than I remember.  Pretty smooth, actually.  You’ll have to furnish your own toe straps but those  aren’t hard to come by.  But the thing is, you need to get past your fear of these pedals and actually install and use them.  Get yourself some old-school cycling shoes, in plain black leather, some old Vittorias or Dettos or something.  Why?  Because clipless pedals on your old Team Miyata is just not right—it’s almost a crime, really, particularly when the Dyna-Drive pedals are arguably the most distinctive thing about that entire era of Dura-Ace componentry.  

Besides, you have to honor these pedals, given the good long while I spent staring at the right one, recalling the cool old machine shop I took it to after stripping the threads during one of my many overhauls (back in my college days).  These were the little threads on the inside of the pedal, where the spindle would be if these crazy pedals had a spindle.  The machinist installed a HeliCoil for me, which worked like a champ, but he also got a gleam in his eye and offered to modify the pedals to use cartridge bearings, and even a special setup for races that would involve mineral oil instead of grease, for maximum efficiency.  I almost went through with it (but was too broke).  Anyway, I raced for years on those pedals and never had a problem.  That yours exploded was probably just God punishing you for doing a triathlon on a pure road racing machine like your Team.

Alas, though I did find a Dura-Ace bottom bracket, in the original box no less, it ended up being the spindle, one matching cup, and another random cup from a totally different era of BB.  The one Dyna-Drive cup is 36x24, which (needless to say) is the Italian thread and size, totally useless to you, though a BB with only one cup is pretty damn useless anyway.  The spindle is pretty badly pitted, as you can see from this photo (note also the close-up of the worn-out chainring teeth):

But the spindle being pitted doesn’t really matter,  because it cannot be used with non-Dyna-Drive cups anyway.  Recalling that incompatibility has been less than enjoyable.  My 1986 Team Miyata broke (well, the fork broke) during the 1990 Collegiate National Championship road race, and after a brief stint on an Orbit (painted orange with a spray can) I bought the steel Guerciotti, Bomb Pop, that was my favorite steel frame ever.  As Bomb Pop was Italian, I had to figure out a new Dyna-Drive-compatible BB and went through half a dozen different combinations of spindles and cups, getting most of my parts from Peter Rich over at Velo-Sport, who was cool enough to let me return one part after another when it didn’t work out, which was every time.  I was working down the street at Square Wheel and one day I looked through the (non-online, paper-bound) Euro-Asia wholesale catalog and discovered you could still order a new-old-stock Dyna-Drive BB, which I did.  I have no idea what happened to my old English-thread Dyna-Drive BB.  Could still be in the Orbit.  I will never know, because I managed to actually lose that Orbit (or did I sell it to Max?) along with the 1986 Team Miyata which really only needed a new fork, but which is definitely lost forever (possibly in my ex-stepfather’s attic).

But wait, you’re asking, what’s that other BB spindle in the photo?  That’s a ’99 Dura-Ace Octalink spindle, probably left over from the Italian-thread BB I bought for Bomb Pop, which I later installed on Full Slab, and eventually had to cut up with a Dremel tool.  But what’s important here is that the Octalink spindle is no wider than that old Dyna-Drive spindle.  This suggests that, modern Q-factors being what they are, you could probably find a low-profile BB for your Team Miyata that would work a lot better than that goofy sealed sumbitch you got in there now. 

Which is good, because I had a long, fun chat with Bryan and have determined that he never did have a Dyna-Drive BB for his Team Miyata, so he got away with a Campy, though his chain line wasn’t perfect.  You could make him an offer for that Campy BB, but you’d either rip him off or pay dearly because those were sweet.  They had these so-called “labyrinth seals”—not a rubber seal, but just a carving into the aluminum rim of the hole in the cup where the spindle went through.  It always seemed to me that such a design would do nothing to keep water out, but it really did work.  After the Steamboat Springs road race in 1983, which was a miserably rainy affair, I actually took my bike (an ’83 Pro Miyata) into the shower with me, and didn’t even need to overhaul the BB afterward.  Smooth as glass, those Campys.  Damn it, maybe I’ll make Bryan an offer myself.  I’ll conjure up a bike to go with it!

By the way, see that grubby red Cinelli handlebar plug in the photo?  That’s the last part I have left from the Mercian I wrote about recently, my second-favorite steel bike ever.  Those were cool plugs because they were squishy, so at high altitudes (e.g., Mount Evans at over 14,000 feet), they popped out slightly.  I dreamed of going down to sea level and reinstalling them to increase this effect.  It’s kind of sad that the bar plug is all I have left of that Mercian.  I mean, a pair at least would have been nice.

Okay, so the last thing:  you’re probably wondering what those Superbe Pro brake levers are doing in the photo.  They have nothing to do with your Team Miyata!  True, but as we’ve discussed, neither do the more modern Superbe Pro brakes you’ve got on your bike now.  And these levers are the right era, and are beautifully made, and let’s face it, aero levers have no place on your ’84 Team.  They just don’t.  Look at that catalog photo:  the brake cables come straight out of the top of the lever, like they should for that vintage.  Sure, aero levers existed back then, but the Team Miyata was a no-nonsense racing bike and aero levers hadn’t earned their place on it yet.  (Miyata was a pretty cool company:  starting in 1982, they finally acknowledged that no Japanese company could produce a good rim, and switched to Mavic GP4s.  On the other hand, that aero water bottle in the photo is pure nonsense and is painful to look at, especially against the backdrop of such a sweet bike.  It’s like if Natalie Portman had tattoos on her face, or those plug-style earrings.)

Of course, the problem with these Superbe Pro levers is that the hoods are gone.  Isn’t it strange how even rubber is higher-tech than it used to be?  Back in the ‘80s we had to replace our brake hoods somewhat often.  Everybody stocked replacement hoods.  You could even put Modolo hoods on your Campy levers and many did.  Or there were the A‘me  ones that came in every different color.  I even remember Armor-All’ing the Dia-Compe hoods on my Miyata 310, to extend their lifespan.  

And now?  Nobody ever needs new hoods.  Ever.  My 1999-issue Dura-Ace STI levers not only have the original hoods, but they’re in mint condition.  (Just the hoods, though ... the levers are beat to hell, the decorative caps busted off, big Phillips-screw exposed, and I even had to file them down after a crash because the scraped-up plastic—plastic!—was so barbed it could have cut my lily-white fingers, though those barbs would never present a risk to a professional bike mechanic, who it is said bleeds on the inside.)  Anyway, you can still find replacement hoods, as these take the same ones as old Campy levers.  (Click here, for example.)

So, this stuff is yours for the asking:  the Dyna-Drive era chainrings; the 42-tooth chainring; the awesome old Dyna-Drive pedals; the non-aero brake levers.  I’ve even got a couple rolls of brand-new Benotto tape in white (with albeit yellowed plugs) you can use if you like.  But I’m keeping the spindles and the Cinelli bar plug.

Epilogue

I got a great reply to this letter from Kevin, which proves that it is humanly possible to make it through a long, dense spew of text like this.  There is much of his reply that I’d like to include here, but of course I have to draw the line somewhere.  I particularly enjoy and appreciate the perspective he finds for all this lore:

The curse of a passion like this is the almost impenetrable gulf it puts between you and outsiders who have no idea what you are talking about and hardly see anything of value in a decades-old box of copulating bike parts.... That Cinelli bar-end plug doesn't speak for itself, it needs an interpreter. Wherever its mate ended up, we can be pretty confident that it is not the crowning centerpiece of a memorial shrine to the long-gone days of Mercian-riding bliss. It’s probably floating in one of those swirls of trash in the Southern oceans. It’s the human component that makes objects into what they are, if that isn’t too obvious to state.

The Return of Full Slab

Introduction

This is the tale of how my late-nineties Guerciotti, which still holds the title for the most expensive frame I’ve ever purchased, became my commuting bike. It’s sort of a sprawling family saga charting my commuter fleet, its deaths and diseases, and the Guerciotti’s downfall, which, in a strange way, has also become its apotheosis. My Guerciotti is named Full Slab, and here it is with me on a high mountain road in Colorado back in 2005:

Here’s a quick quiz to decide if this post is for you.

Q-factor is:

a) A subjective judgment of how cute a bike is

b) A measure of the distance between a bike’s pedals

c) A measure of how quiet a bike’s drivetrain is

An Italian bottom-bracket shell is :

a) More stylish than American-market bottom-bracket shells

b) Larger in diameter than an English one

c) Enough to get this post an R rating

Sturmey-Archer is:

a) A grain and oilseed conglomerate

b) A once-proud English maker of internally geared bicycle hubs

c) A dashing rogue from a romance novel

The right answer in each case is (b). If you got at least two right answers, or are disappointed at scoring a zero or one on this quiz, read on. If your eyes glazed over immediately, go read something else or enjoy some television. If you’re somewhere in between, scroll down and look at the photos. There are lots of them.

A proper fleet

Everybody really needs about half a dozen bikes. First, your pride and joy, which is your racing bike. Then, you need to have your “rain bike,” which is a lesser racing bike that you ride in the rain or on your stationary trainer. Also, you should have a mountain bike for satisfying your dirt centers (and optionally a cyclocross bike if you’re into that sort of thing). Finally, you need two commuting bikes. One is a basic three-speed with a big basket and fenders and a chain guard. This bike is for commuting when you’re in a suit and/or in the rain and/or when you’re grocery shopping. The final bike you need is your fast commuter, which has a full 12- or 14-speed drivetrain, light wheels, etc. for going all the way across town.

Until recently, I was living the dream: I had all the bikes listed above, and our household bike total was nine (with only one car). But then, catastrophe struck.

Death comes to the fast commuter

One day this past February, I was sprinting all-out on my fast commuter, not a care in the world (other than being late), minding my own business, not bothering anybody, when all of a sudden, out of the blue, for no apparent reason, with no provocation whatsoever (all of these phrases, by the way, are part of the stock tale that a bike shop customer tells when asking for a warranty), there was a really loud sound like a snapping turtle breaking a broomstick in two, and my bike went from riding just fine to flexing like crazy, a weird springboard boinga-boinga-boinga action, probably a bit like an early ‘80s aluminum Vitus. Remarkably, I was able to get the bike off the road without crashing it. Check out how it broke:

It’s not unusual to break a frame on a fast commuting bike. All frames have a lifespan, and commuters get ridden hard and put away wet (to use an equine analogy). The first frame I built up as a fast commuter was a Serotta, which I got free in 1985 from a fellow mechanic at the bike shop. It had broken before I got it, and to teach himself the art of brazing this mechanic replaced a tube or a lug or something. That frame lasted three rides. I replaced it with a Maserati, a cheap Italian frame a pal gave me because he’d outgrown it. The Maserati lasted about five years, and then it broke as I dropped off a curb going from Sproul Plaza to Bancroft Way on a rainy night in ’91. I replaced it right away with a Bridgestone RB-7 or some such thing that I traded a headset for. That bike gave me nineteen years of trouble-free use. (The components have gone from frame to frame to frame; the rims are Wolber 58s that could withstand the Apocalypse.)

The Arseless

With my fast commuter broken, I’ve spent the last nine months commuting on the Arseless (named after an assassin's bike in a Roddy Doyle book), which is my old black Triumph 3-speed, from England (by way of Connecticut and craigslist). The good news with these old 3-speeds is that you never need to service them. The bad news is that you never need to service them. Bikes like these could really use a good overhaul, but you don’t dare. It’s common knowledge that if you go near one of these bikes with a wrench, they can go to pieces, parts sproinging out like some crazy Pandora’s jack-in-the-box. Every bolt you touch strips instantly. Each component is slowly rusting to death, held together only by habit or inertia—the pattern of is molecules is just barely stable. For years I refused even to take the rear wheel off this bike, fixing each inevitable flat by pulling out the punctured part of the tube and patching it. Keep in mind that I worked in shops for more than a decade: if I’m reluctant to work on a 3-speed bike, you can bet its previous owners were even more reluctant. Which means this bike has likely never been serviced in its life, and it’s older than I am.

So you never tune up the 3-speed, and it just gets slower and slower as the bearings gradually destroy themselves. If you did take the wheel off, you probably couldn’t turn the axle with your fingers. Perhaps a one-speed would be manageable without ever being serviced, but a 3-speed is trickier. The English-made Sturmey-Archer 3-speed hub is a feisty beast, known to turn on its rider without warning. One second the pedals are engaged with the rear wheel, and the next second the linkage is missing and the pedals spin uselessly, which can make you lurch as if dry-heaving, bash your leg on the bars, and/or crash the bike.

Every 3-speed I’ve ever owned has done this to me. Usually it’s when you’re in second gear and then, suddenly, aren’t. Here’s just one such tale of woe, which I described in a letter to my brother a few years back: “I was riding to the store on the Arseless the other day, in a hurry because dinner was waiting on whatever I had to buy, and the rear tire was almost flat so I was out of the saddle. I was in second gear, because that bike is so inefficient (and high-geared) that third would’ve been too hard. Right about the time I realized I was in second, and what that meant, it was suddenly too late—the Sturmey freewheeled on me and my knee bashed the bars with great force. I cussed up a storm, not realizing I was passing the new down-the-street neighbors’ house and their little daughter was within earshot. D’oh! My knee was really sore, and in fact that evening I could barely walk.”

The cussing theme recurred recently when, as a treat, I rode to my daughter’s school on the Arseless, riding one-handed so I could roll my daughter’s mountain bike along next to me (so we could ride home together). This two-bike arrangement meant twenty-plus pounds of extra weight, and that I couldn’t ride out of the saddle up Peralta, which is a steep hill. (It’s not actually steep. I could probably tackle it in the big ring on my Orbea. But the Arseless makes mountains out of molehills. First gear on a Sturmey is okay for the flats; second is fine for a downhill; third is only suitable for going down a ski slope. Either England is totally flat, or the Sturmey company saw an opportunity to celebrate that famous British stoicism and perseverance.) Struggling not to drop Alexa’s bike, I was weaving back and forth, barely able to continue pedaling, and let loose with a loud and serious curse, when I saw one of those nice old people who sit on their porches watching the world go by. She looked stricken. I felt great shame. It decided then and there it was time to build up another fast commuter.

Finding a frame

Having never shelled out any money for a fast commuter frameset, I set my budget at near-zero. I figured I could find a decent old frame, or even a complete bike, on craigslist for cheap. The 1980s was a golden era for good inexpensive Japanese road bikes; you see them all over the place, still going strong. Generally, a bike owner has little idea as to the value is of his bike, and this can work in your favor. But I was shocked to find people asking more money for an early ‘80s bike than the damn thing cost new! They seem to think the bikes are collector’s items or something. The worst ad was for a “"vintage Free Spirit road bike" for $125: “Bikes in rideable condition... Also would be a great frame for a collector to rebuild.” A Free Spirit is a department store bike, which is the bike equivalent of non-dairy creamer, or a cheap kid’s toy covered with lead paint, or a Costco frozen burger patty. No Free Spirit has ever cost more than $100 new, and would be a total rip-off at $5. “Great frame for a collector to rebuild” … is this guy crazy? I’d sooner buy used toilet paper.

Which brings us to Full Slab. The frame was just sitting in the garage, its parts having been looted to put on a new frame three years ago. The chrome on Full Slab was lousy to begin with, and as a result it had badly rusted during its four-year role as my rain bike. Three years ago I decided to get some Quick-Glo rust remover and restore the frame. Here is a before shot:

I did a web photo album of the restoration, and the above photo carried the caption “The Horror!” A friend posted this comment: “A more appropriate title for the photo is impossible. That makes me want to run from the room shrieking like one of my daughters.”

The rust cleaned up remarkably well, but all the same, my friend’s comment really made an impression on me. The phrase “my daughters” was particularly compelling; after all, I can’t help but descend pretty fast, even on my rain bike. So I’d decided I couldn’t conscionably keep using the frame for actual road rides, and replaced it with something basic but non-ferrous. (Note to burglars: as far as you know, I have a vicious attack dog who guards my house, and just the other day I trained him to chew the zipper out of a pair of jeans.)

Now, a commuting bike doesn’t have to be as safe as a road bike; I seldom break 20 mph around town. So, the rust wouldn’t be an issue. Yet, I hesitated to reincarnate Full Slab as a commuter because a) it seems a lowly occupation for what was once my primary road bike, and b) I actually never liked Full Slab that much to begin with.

I’d bought the frame online in August of 1998, sight unseen, for $881.94. The website provided most of the details of the frame geometry, but the head tube angle was listed as “proprietary.” Since the frame had a long top tube, I naturally assumed it would have a steep head angle, which is how to keep the wheelbase relatively short. But Full Slab arrived with a shallow head tube angle and a long wheelbase. I’ll never forget that first ride. As I left my apartment and rode up Polk Street toward Lombard, I immediately realized the ride was lousy. Like a damn mule.

(When I replaced Full Slab, I was determined not to take any chances with frame geometry, and designed my own frame. Here is a design that, in my opinion, totally rocks.)

Needless to say, I got over my misgivings about repurposing my old road bike, and set about putting the Guerciotti back into service.

The catch

The trouble was, predictably enough I couldn’t get the fixed cup out of Full Slab’s bottom bracket shell. The cup is made of (relatively) soft aluminum, and its design is the victim of dunderheaded nationalism. The British Standard for fixed cups is to have a left-hand thread, and for jolly good reason: as you pedal the bike, the turning crankset causes the bottom bracket spindle to rotate within the cups. Because of this rotation, a cup with a right-hand thread will tighten itself down endlessly until it’s too tight to remove for servicing.

But the Italians just had to be different, had to defy the British and their sensible design, had to throw their weight around and ensure incompatibilities that I imagine were originally meant to protect their GDP. The Guerciotti being Italian, it has an Italian-thread bottom bracket shell and thus was doomed to have its fixed cup tighten itself to death. The adjustable cup (threaded into the left side of the BB shell, where pedaling would tend to loosen it) came right off, but all I managed with the fixed cup was to booger the wrench slots up a bit. I brought the frame to my local bike shop, and the mechanic there took one look at it and said, in essence, “Sucks to be you.” He made a cursory attempt to remove the cup, and then threw up his hands. I can’t blame him; such an operation isn’t really a repair—it’s a fool’s errand, and cannot possibly be profitable for a shop.

Fortunately, I have some red meat in the house, and a garage with a big messy workbench, and a Dremel tool, and a vocabulary rich in expressions like “Sometimes a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.” So I used the Dremel to cut a new slot into the cup so I could get a really good purchase with a big screwdriver, to which I would apply, with extreme prejudice, great and violent pressure using a tool that at the bike shop we liked to call “The Persuader.” That is, a hammer. Here is the Dremel tool in action:

This scheme did not work. Actually, I didn’t really expect it to work, but I had to try. Then I sought advice from my brothers Geoff and Bryan, but subsequently decided that neither of their suggestions would work. This wasn’t necessarily a fair conclusion, but having been mocked by my older brothers during my teen years for not being “mechanically minded,” it was almost a matter of pride to pursue my own solution. I cut another slot in the cup, across from the first one, and widened the slots:

Why did I widen the slots? And why two of them? So I could fit a flat headset spanner in there, of course:

Once I had the spanner in there, it was just a matter of whaling on that bad boy with the Persuader. Like magic, the cup screwed out just fine, in one piece no less. The threads are perfect in the bottom bracket shell, and the new bottom bracket went in in a jiffy. The hard part of the assembly was over; now it was just a matter of moving the parts over from the Bridgestone.

The assembly

Fortunately, I had my daughter Alexa helping. It’s not like I couldn’t have done it without her, but involving her makes this less of a selfish bike project and more of a Quality Time With Dad scenario.

One goal for this enterprise was to purchase as little as possible in the way of new parts. All I actually purchased was an Italian-thread square-taper bottom-bracket (which I was relieved to find mail-order for $20). Other stuff I got from The Box. Every cyclist should have a box like this in his garage:

The hardest part of the assembly was the brakes. I’ve got some nice Dura-Ace calipers in The Box, but of course I wanted to use Mafac cantilevers with bolt-on Moots Mounts. Here, Alexa removes the mounts from the old frame, being careful not to lose any parts.

Why the Mafacs? Well, for one thing, every bike should have some French parts on it, as a show of humility and a hedge against dogmatism. (All my bikes have at least one French component, except the Arseless, which would reject it like a bad organ.) By the way, look at the bright orange water bottle in the ground there. It’s an important part of the bike. It has a story: I had it on my bike when I lived in San Luis Obispo, and a local racer actually asked me to stop using it. He was very proud of being Dutch, and told me that an orange water bottle was kind of his trademark in the peloton. I thought his request was absurd and reeked of narcissism. I was working at a bike shop at the time, and happened to learn that Specialized was blowing out those orange bottles for thirty cents apiece wholesale. I ordered like two dozen of them and gave them out to all my friends. At the next race, they were all over the place. If anything, the orange bottle had become the trademark of the Cuesta Community College cycling team.

Okay, back to the bike. Because the Moots Mounts flex like crazy, my brothers and I fashioned some stiffeners out of old steel chainrings to improve the braking performance. Tough to set up, but the setup looks pretty cool, doesn’t it?

Note also the Campy shifters. These are the later-model engraved ones made in Milan; I used to have the even cooler ones made in Vicenza with the “CAMPAGNOLO” in raised letters. Also note the pink gear cable. I was determined not to buy any cables, housing, brake pads, or anything. (I’m not sure why I have this impulse; perhaps it’s a backlash against an industry whose goal, as with most industries, is to get people to replace perfectly good stuff with the latest version.) Replacing the chain would have been a good idea about eighteen years ago; now, with two decades on it, it’s too late—the chain has a special relationship with the cogs, which would skip with any other chain. So I put the ancient Sedisport back on there.

What’s remarkable, given the old chain, is that the “new” chainrings don’t skip. Not exactly new: I dug out my old (1983) Dura-Ace AX Dyna-Drive crankset, wondering why I didn’t have it on the previous incarnation of this bike. Then it dawned on me that when I built up that Bridgestone commuter, I still had the Dyna-Drives on my racing bike! (In fact, they earned me the nickname “Dana-Drive” at UCSB.) These cranks used a wacky pedal—you can see a pair of them in The Box, above—that had no axle, and whose axis of rotation was actually below the end of the crank. This gave me the equivalent of a lower bottom bracket, lowering me a bit on the bike so I could get a better draft behind the others. Very cool stuff. In 1984 Alexi Grewal, though officially riding Suntour, used this same model of crank when he won the Olympic road race. Also in this photo you can see the beat-to-hell old Campy front derailleur.

Traveling exhibit

There seems to be a real fad of turning old road bikes into “fixies” by removing the derailleurs and such. Why anybody in hilly Berkeley or San Francisco would want to do this is beyond me. Not only are gears nice to have, but shifting is fun, and keeping your drivetrain intact provides the opportunity for more exhibits in your rolling museum. Look at this sweet Dura-Ace rear derailleur, circa 1980:

Locking up your bike’s wheels is a hassle, so I have these sweet bolt-on Suntour cartridge-bearing hubs. Of course it would be even cooler if Campy made bolt-on hubs for road bikes. I had to make do with using my Campy “peanut butter” wrench to install them. You can see the Arseless in the background. Note also the DT spokes the wheel is laced with. Life is good!

I’ve always hated those clunky little clamps for the Kryptonite lock, and have had the pleasure of not needing them, thanks to my Fisher twin-strut handlebars that accommodate the lock perfectly. Note also the brake lever condoms, bar-ends, and even a Dura-Ace headset—the height of decadence on a humble commuter bike!

So here is the bike, all ready to go. My main impression of it, when it was all done, is how huge it is. Lindsay noticed it too, the first time she got a ride on my top tube (a regular occurrence). She pointed out that nobody would want to steal the bike because they wouldn’t be tall enough to ride it. At first I thought the bike gawky, but you know, at the end of a long workday, it’s actually kind of nice not being bent so far over the bike. In fact, for a mere commuter bike, this thing rides like a dream. It is certainly the best commuting bike I’ve ever had, and I must say it’s nice to finally feel complete respect for Full Slab. This bike has finally come into its own. It’s like the mediocre football player who went on to be a great coach, or the so-so racehorse who found a glorious second career as a stud.

But wait, there was one final change I had to make after I’d taken this photo: the Concor Light saddle just didn’t belong. For an old-school bike like this, I really needed the Turbo. So here it is, all 450 grams of it, mounted on one of the sweetest seatposts ever made: the Campy Super Record.

Just in case you were thinking of ripping this bike off, rest assured I put it in a locker at Bart now. As for breaking into my garage at home, did I mention my killer attack dog?

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