Pete Geurds wrote:
>Supposedly, at one time, Raleigh made every part in house(except saddles and
>tires). I'm skeptical of that too.
This is true. Raleigh had a policy of using proprietary threading, which precluded the substitution of the standard Whitworth hardware used on their competitors. The 26 tpi headsets and bottom brackets are well known, but are only the tip of the iceberg.
All of the brake hardware, fender mounting bolts, cotter nuts, seatpost bolts were all proprietary sized on Nottingham bikes through the early '60s. Raleighs took 1" seatposts when most British bikes used 1 1/16. They had the fender eyelets located in a different spot, so you couldn't use other fenders. Their forks had special dropouts that only worked well with Raleigh axles and nuts (which were also a different thread from British standard. The bottom bracket spindles were different in length and diameter from anything else.
This gave them an effective monopoly on repair parts, which was of more importance back then, because the bikes were intended for a much longer service life than modern manufacturers envisage.
As far as I know, the only standard threads on these old Nottingham Raleighs were the pedal threads, and maybe the spoke threads (but there's no doubt that Raleigh/Sturmey-Archer made spokes and nipples.)
The saddles came from Brooks, a company closely linked to Raleigh.
The tyres and rims came from Dunlop, who also had a very tight
relationship with Raleigh. Everything else, they made.
>On the other hand how much hardware on a bike is really generic?
>Not a lot if you' re out trying to get replacements from your local fastener
>supplier.
There has been a strong trend in that direction in my working lifetime.
Fender/rack bolts and water bottle cage bolts are standard 5 mm, available at any metric-aware hardware store. This size is also used for most cable anchor bolts, and front derailer clamp bolts.
Standard 6 mm bolts are used to hold cantilevers to the frame bosses. Caliper brakes are held on by standard 6 mm thread fasteners. Threadless stems and MTB bar ends commonly use this size or the 5 mm size as well.
Most one-bolt seatposts use standard 8 mm Allen bolts. Some stem wedge bolts do too, but I think most use a finer thread than the standard 8 x 1.25.
Campagnolo is odd-man-out in this, the last major parts company using oddball threadings.
Sheldon "Standardization Is good" Brown
Newtonville, Massachusetts
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| How harmful overspecialization is. |
| It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding. |
| --Isaac Asimov |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
Harris Cyclery, West Newton, Massachusetts
Phone 617-244-9772, 617-244-1040, FAX 617-244-1041
http://harriscyclery.com
Hard-to-find parts shipped Worldwide
http://captainbike.com
Useful articles about bicycles and cycling
http://sheldonbrown.com