Frank Cohen said
> No BSA kit was the norm on track bikes even the Yankee 6 day riders
> had enough common sense to fit this stuff rather than Schwinn just
> check the pictures.
It was more than that. Among the old track riders and mechanics in the US, speaking the letters BSA was always preceded by a reverential "genuine". In its day, I think that the BSA relative prestige was higher than Campagnolo at its height. As Frank says, Schwinn made a very nice and certainly more elegant set of track components but many of the Paramounts had all the Schwinn stuff stripped off and BSA put on. Of course the Schwinn stuff was late in the game, but I'm sure the reverence for BSA went back to the 20's and 30's. One consequence is that you still find that stripped off Schwinn stuff, which there never must have been much of, at swap meets or showing up on bikes when people opportunisticaly grabbed it up to put it on another frame. I suppose in the UK Chater Lea had an equal or better reputation than BSA but not here. I gather the Australian regard for BSA was quite high also. I am always impressed with how hard the steel is and how well the bearings hold up although other stuff from the same era was lighter and more elegant.
Joe Bender-Zanoni
Great Notch, NJ