Steel frames and le Tour

Robert Chung wrote:
On Jul 10, 7:11�am, Scott wrote:

I wouldn't be surprised if someone was riding one in this year's
Tour.

Scott:

Just. Stay. Down.


what? underinformed dreamers don't get to bull**** on usenet? that
would drop traffic on this group down by a factor of 100. or more.

On Jul 10, 9:31Â*pm, jim beam wrote:
bfd wrote:
On Jul 7, 11:22�am, wrote:
Anyone know the last year a steel frame was used by a racing cyclist
in the TdF?

Not sure about the TdF, but here's the last steel frame to win any
kind of championship:

http://www.bikespecialties.com/site/peloton4.html

Btw, that's Dede Barry's 2002 world cup steel frame with carbon fork.
Here's her description of it:

"I wanted a steel bike, for durability and strength,

just because someone can ride fast, or likes their frames to look purty,
doesn't understand their materials. Â*cfrp is much superior to high
strength steel, ti or aluminum in fatigue.

with the vintage
Mariposa lugs. He ordered the lightest steel available, pieced it
together with the lugs, placed a lightweight, stiff carbon fork on it
and painted the whole bike, including the stem and fork, light and
royal blue. We chose Campagnolo components and he had it all built up
for me in two weeks, just in time to get dialed in on it before the
race."

and much more expensive. An al frame that does pretty mcuh the same as
a cf frame can be had for about $100.

On Jul 10, 2:32*pm, Donald Munro wrote:
wrote:
Dear RJ,
John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
Dear Carl.
Donald Munro wrote:
All these dears. This place is beginning to sound like a gay tea party..
Tosspot wrote:
Carbon or china teacups?

There's a 50/50 chance they're steel.

and 50/50 that they are gay? Now that I think about it I spent my week
with a lesbian colleague. She prefaces a lot of her written
conversations with dear, but not her verbal encounters.

carlfogel wrote:
"When told of this [Vos Savant's solution _is_ correct], Paul Erdos, one
of the leading mathematicians of the twentieth century, said 'That's
impossible.'

Donald Munro wrote:
Only because he's a doper. I know because my LIVEDRUNK(tm)
representative told me.

Make that '_was_ a doper' He's no longer with us.

Erdos pithily said that a mathematician is a device to turn coffee into
theorems. He probably meant speed. Whatever.
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

On Jul 10, 10:07*pm, wrote:
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:04:43 -0700 (PDT), "Paul G."

wrote:
On Jul 10, 5:52*pm, wrote:

*They're pros. They ride what they're paid to ride. They aren't
fetishists who see the bicycle as a singular work of art with an
idealized form. For racers, bicycles are tools to be used and
discarded when worn out. No different than the way a carpenter sees a
hammer or circular saw. As one pro once told me, "We would ride
shopping carts if we were paid to

Or Peugeot PX-10's. *Owen Mullholland reported that Thevenet had his
chainrings changed daily when he won the TDF riding a Peugeot PX-10 as
they were "ground to powder".
-Paul

Dear Paul,

I don't doubt your good faith, but wonder if the chain-ring grinding
was mostly in the mind of Mullholland or Thevenet.

It's darned hard to grind metal chain-rings noticeably in only 200
miles or less of road riding, much less "to powder," at an average
speed of about 21 mph in 1975 and 22 mph in 1977:
*http://www.kc3a.com/pj_divers/tourde...?dat=61&y=1975
*http://www.kc3a.com/pj_divers/tourde...?dat=63&y=1977

But maybe someone will come up with a picture from 1975 or 1977 of a
trashed chain ring.

Or with accounts of other PX-10 riders on the Peugeot team replacing
their chain rings.

Obviously, they had to going just as far and almost as fast as
Thevenet.

In fact, if they let the star Thevenet draft them most of the time in
the modern Tour fashion, then they had to harder and should have
ruined their chain rings even sooner.

According to p. 241 of Berto's "Dancing Chain," Thevenet used a
Simplex derailleur and a Stronglight crankset on an (allegedly) stock
Peugeot PY1.

Owen got that info directly from Thevenet's mechanic. Owen was looking
at Thevenet's bike as the mechanic was changing the chainrings, and
the mechanic explained what he was doing. The "ground to powder"
phrase (which stuck in my mind all these years) is Owen's translation
from French. I'm sure that's an exaggeration, but my memory of the
Stronglight chainrings is that they were not a very hard aluminum
alloy compared with the Campy rings of the day.

The concept of winning the TDF on a stock entry-level racing bike like
the Peugeot was a big deal, so Owen was checking it out. Those Simplex
deraileurs were lousy compared with Campy and the Japanese slant
pantograph design available at that time. I think Owen's point was
that the mechanic was doing more maintenance than normal.

So that's the context.

You might be right that the new chainrings were Thevenet's idea- "I'm
grinding these suckers to powder, Jacques, put on some new ones."
-Paul

Donald Munro wrote:

William Asher wrote:
Carl seems like a new version for you. Sort of like maybe Tom Vista, an
upgrade that people at first like even less than the old version, yet
everyone will still use because, well, they're use to Tom XP.

Will I need to upgrade my hardware to run FOGEL10000 instead
of TOM9000 ?

It doesn't appear to be a requirement, JT's got it performing on his
existing system flawlessly. I'm betting that a lot of the menu options are
still pretty much the same. I'm a little bummed that TOM9000 doesn't run
for me anymore, although I have no intention of installing FOGEL10000.
I've called Schwartzsoft technical support, but some guy with an Indian
accent just tells I should be grateful and get back to work.

--
Bill Asher

Michael Press wrote:
In article ,
(A R:nen) wrote:

Howard Kveck writes:

Carbon or china teacups?
With all the Fattie Masters in here, it would have to be carbon, with ceramic
saucers.
Here's the carbon teacup: http://www.tune.de/produkte/karbontasse.htm,
but in this one the saucer is carbon as well. Who makes the ceramic
saucer upgrade?

Not much use. In a knock-down, drag-out they fail to provide
the soul-satisfying, crashing, splintering tinkle I expect;
but rather bounce off the walls and smack me in the eye.

But great for throwing at the wife/girlfriend, you can pick it up and
throw it again...and again...and again. 'Course, you're ****ed if she
gets to it first.

I'm strangely tempted by one.

In article ,
Scott wrote:
On Jul 10, 1:41*pm, (Booker Bense) wrote:
In article ,


Dude, it's not 1990... You are completely bat**** if you think
there's a steel bike in the pro peleton. It would be instantly
obvious ( thin straight tubes.... ), bikes can't be "disguised"
that much anymore.

I suspect many of the riders in the TDF have NEVER ridden a
lugged steel bike in their entire lives. Certainly, never raced
on one.

_ Booker C. Bense

Try to follow my point. I'll type slower if that'll help. I didn't
say that anyone is riding a steel frame. I said it's possible, and I
wouldn't be surprised if someone was.


If you're not suprised at someone riding a steel frame in the
TDF, you're bat****... How's that for simple?

_ Booker C. Bense

On Jul 11, 10:23*am, still just me wrote:
On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:39:15 -0700 (PDT), "Paul G."

wrote:
The concept of winning the TDF on a stock entry-level racing bike like
the Peugeot was a big deal, so Owen was checking it out. Those Simplex
deraileurs were lousy compared with Campy and the *Japanese slant
pantograph design available at that time. I think Owen's point was
that the mechanic was doing *more maintenance than normal.

Good information, but I have to disagree on the derailleur analysis.
Campy was still using a primitive one spring design. Japanese slant
was just starting to make inroads in 1975. The Simple Super LJ was the
best shifting derailleur of the era, and was the peak of that design
style before slant took over.

I have to disagree. I spent the summer of 1972 touring Western Europe,
and I used a Suntour rear derailleur with a long cage. It was cheap
and worked beautifully:
"In 1964, Suntour invented the slant-parallelogram rear derailleur,
which let the jockey wheels maintain a more constant distance from the
different sized sprockets, resulting in easier shifting. Once the
patents expired, other manufacturers adopted this design." So they
were widely available and popular in the 70's, at least as
replacements. French bikes did come with French components, and
Italian bikes came with Italian components in those days.

The Campy rear derailleur of the day was well-made, though the design
was inferior to the slant pantograph. The problem with the Simplex
derailleurs was that they were made with a lot of plastic so they
flexed and had a lot of friction.

In poking around I found this page with some very interesting old
derailleurs:
http://www.m-gineering.nl/oldtech.htm
-Paul

In article
,
"Paul G." wrote:

On Jul 10, 8:22*pm, jim beam wrote:
dave a wrote:
Paul G. wrote:
On Jul 10, 12:59 pm, Scott wrote:
On Jul 10, 1:29 pm, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:21:47 -0700 (PDT), Scott
wrote:
The odds for any given rider using a steel frame is not 1 in
10 or 1 in 100 or whatever. *It's 50/50.
Is this a joke?
No. *It's really quite binary. *Either a rider IS or IS NOT
riding a steel frame.

Holy ****! I'm buying lottery tickets now that I know my odds of
winning are binary! I'm either going to win, or not. 50/50!
-Paul

Buying a ticket doesn't really change the odds much. *The
difference between zero and 10e-49 isn't much.

you're missing the point - paul's odds are not 50/50 - he's not
very good at math.

I'm not good at math? Now you tell me, I already bought two lottery
tickets...

The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.