[CR]steel is real...

(Example: Books)

Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 20:12:06 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
From: <chasds@mindspring.com>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: [CR]steel is real...

someone whose name I didn't remember to copy wrote:

Everyone still believes what they always have about Steel frames. Lets hash out Cranksets,or Pedals. I think Campy 70s is still the best ever made!!! Only complaint on crankset,it needed a smaller bolt

*********

Just a little note about steel frames...I have a very rare steel frame now in restoration (marque shall remain anonymous, but it's a biggie), and it turned out the frame was slapped together so fast that the boys forgot a little thing like getting enough braze in the bb to secure the seat-tube.

Then this frame was ridden damn near to death, before I got hold of it. The bb shell was developing a crack, the result of inadequate brazing..and the seat-tube should have cracked too, but didn't, thankfully.

New braze has been added, and it should be good for another 30 years at least... all by way of saying, what? Exactly? That even steel ain't perfect if not treated right in the building.. but imagine any other material treated that way. For instance, a "lugged" carbon frame with inadequate epoxy in the bb sleeve holding the seat-tube. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen in the first sprint... this old steel frame went 30 years and countless miles with no problem..although it *was* going to fail, had the flaw not been corrected.

-----and another thing... current Campagnolo Record cranks are a big improvement over the original Record cranks in every way you can name, except the Q-factor, which sucks, but that would be ot, wouldn't it?

Charles Andrews
SoCal