Thanks to all who e-mailed me privately or posted re. my PX-10 seatpost query. And yep, they were indeed steel and no one really knows why. Part of the Gallic headscratching quality that makes French bikes irresistable!
British lightweights had alloy seatpins (to use the correct term) from the get-go (certainly from 1947 onwards and pre-war on some models), but kept to steel, cottered chainsets long after the French and the Italians had gone to cotterless alloy. And both the French and British seemed to have embraced alloy stems and handlebars more than the Italians or at least earlier. The only constant seems to be the ready adaption of alloy rims although the omni-present Dunlop lightweight steel HP shows it was more of a struggle in the UK.
On that note: what were the best British made alloy sprint rims (i.e. for tubulars or whatever the CR List is calling them this week)? One doesn't see too many of them or hear of them. Most British lightweights in the 1950s/60s seemed to have used foreign sprint rims, Weinmanns, Fiammes etc.
Peter Kohler Washington DC USA
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