Ted said:
"The rear bridges also are not that strong, so it's nicer to put /make up a clamp arrangement that that won't squeeze your seatstays and do damage. I don't think I would ride a fully restored vintage frameset and bolt on frame clamps, etc. to ride around on."
Ted is right. I machined up a rear clamp for my Pop Brennan. It was a complete custom fit, wrapping around all the way around the stays, right beneath the bridge etc. Well a year later, about 1994, the stay detached. I brought it down to Irvington, NJ, jigged it up and Bill Brennan (Pop's son) brazed it. The shop closed soon after as I suppose Bill was in his 80's and the neighborhood was a tad rough.
Buy a Frejus. Stout fork and drilled. A great track bike for the road.
By the way, lots of great track bikes came with drilled forks. Sieber, an option on Paramount.
Joe Bender-Zanoni Great Notch, NJ
ernst wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "ternst" <ternst1@cox.net>
> To: "Elizabeth & Warren" <warbetty@eastlink.ca>
> Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 5:36 PM
> Subject: Re: [CR]Stopping a fixed gear in Ted's day.
>
>
>> Ok guys and gals, here's the skinny "when WE used to ride" hah!.
>> First: Be careful on putting brakes on the front round blade forks
>> and how hard you stop.
>> Not all those old forks have design line crowns and the round blades
>> will flex somewhat more than the oval road blades and remember that's
>> why they put the uneven line on the lugs to break up the stress riser
>> lines.
>> Putting a road fork in is not that bad an idea if you use the bike a
>> lot.
>> The rear bridges also are not that strong, so it's nicer to put /make
>> up a clamp arrangement that that won't squeeze your seatstays and do
>> damage.
>> I don't think I would ride a fully restored vintage frameset and bolt
>> on frame clamps, etc. to ride around on.
>> Learn how to glove your wheel and ride for show and around on flatter
>> ground. It would be a shame to damage a primo bike by putting brakes on.
>> Warren's finder CCM on "E" is nice and those brakes work?
>> Those old contraptions some times can be adjusted to stop fair, but
>> remember kiddies, the hard core riders grin and tell you brakes are
>> only to moderate , modulate, and slightly control speed, they are not
>> there to stop.
>> What the hell, you some kinda sissy? Snicker, or so say the hotshots
>> when pulling beginner's legs.
>> Back to the track. I keep getting side anecdoted.
>> By the way, 50x16 is 25x8 or an 88" gear as we used to measure with
>> 28" wheelchart. That was a most popular gear for average fixed
>> racing. 26x8 was for the good guys on road, and the team race and
>> six-day gear of choice, which was called 91. The sprinters used
>> 25,24,23x7 which had more leverage from chainwheel
>> to crank end so had a slightly quicker jump, but not the rolling of
>> the larger chainwheels for longer distance races. The smaller CW's
>> "died" sooner and you had to push a little harder to keep them
>> rolling than the big chainwheel that rolled longer and it was just a
>> little easier in the team and mass start long events.
>> First you need to get nice heavier duty gloves so they don't wear
>> through too fast. Best to use two so you become ambidextrous, just in
>> case.
>> You stop the front wheel with your glove and a firm flat palm/hand
>> which is forced down on TOP of the front tire with the pressure to
>> stop as you need by placing your forearm behind the bar , flat palm
>> on tire, and the wedging/pushing your forearm against the bar like a
>> lever and fulcrum.
>> If you do it hard enough, you can lift your back wheel off the ground
>> real easy if you practice it when standing next to your bike and
>> executing the discipline correctly.
>> At first you will have a little bruising or a soreness in your
>> forearm, but pretty soon you toughen up and you get so hard you can
>> eat brick ice cream and rock candy.
>> Now as Popeye's playmates you are ready to ride faster and practice
>> quicker stopping.
>> Oh yeah, remember to loosen your toe strap before you start slowing
>> so you can get your foot out and not fall down on your osteoporitic
>> hip. That's why we never put the top of the strap in the loop so we
>> could flik the strap open on the downstroke with our thumb just
>> before we start our stopping.
>> All you old fogies ain't getting any younger except in your mind and
>> when you look at the Playboy calendar.
>> As you start gloving the wheel, the reason you keep you hand flat is
>> to prevent sidewall friction and wear on your sewup tires, too much
>> rubbing and you could damage the sidewall casing.
>> Rider's have grabbed the front wheel and locked in extreme cases for
>> a panic situation.
>> While gloving your wheel, it's important to slide your butt backwards
>> on the bike proportionally to the intensity of braking.
>> This keeps your balance better and puts weight on the back wheel so
>> it doesn't skid as easily, because as your doing this you are gently
>> back pedalling to resist the motion at the same time.
>> It's the gloving and simultaneous backpedalling with backwheel weight
>> done skilfully that gives you the quickstop!
>> Your non-gloving wheel is steering and holding your body weight back
>> on the saddle to balance you out, to make this tricky sounding
>> manuver much easier and fluid. Guys with bigger butts could be called
>> pearshaped like the guy in the old cartoon strip, but in our street
>> parlance we referred to them as BA's
>> After awhile it becomes psychosomatic, the braking that is.
>> Like the guys in the plumbing shop two doors down from our bikestore
>> used to tell us,(they were all fat, cigar smoking redneck kinda guys)
>> as they always came out and kidded the riders when we had 10-12 guys
>> out front on the sidewalk in their cycling attire going for training
>> rides, that we all had size 60 chests and size 2 hats.
>> So bikes rider being notorious for not having any brains anyways or
>> they wouldn't be riding bikes, could obviously do the track bike fast
>> stopping without thought.
>> You knew I could tie all this together, just like a bike race strategy.
>> Yeah it always felt faster when wet, but gloving didn't work worth a
>> damn in the rain, so we always sloed down in training, but when
>> caught out in rain during a race you REALLY had to be careful on oil
>> sliks, painted street letters/lines and stuff like that. Many a rider
>> and bunches fall down go boom with track bikes because it was an
>> accident waiting to happen. But it was fast and fun.
>> Hope this gives a little better idea and trust youse all will chime
>> in with a few of your war stories and we can have some timely
>> timeline exchanges for our very own.
>> There I go, right back to team race mode.
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Elizabeth & Warren"
>> <warbetty@eastlink.ca>
>> To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
>> Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 3:03 PM
>> Subject: Re: [CR]Stopping a fixed gear in Ted's day.
>>
>>
>>> I think you really needed to develop that braking skill to survive.
>>> Have a look at this original condition 30's CCM racer on ebay.
>>>
>>> #*http://tinyurl.com/yat8og
>>>
>>> *It came stock to the public with a 50 X 16 fixed gear and those
>>> Endricks are the rare Dunlops with 647 mm beads. (no replacement
>>> tires there.) I think that's over 90 gear inches. Inagine the
>>> potential horror when you flip the wheel over to ride the 18 tooth
>>> freewheel and start downhill. Near certain-death on todays urban
>>> streets.
>>>
>>> It has the rear Phillips boat-anchor brake of course. You just had
>>> to heave it into the gutter and maybe it would catch a sewer grate.
>>>
>>> Warren Young
>>> Wolfville NS.
>>>
>>> Kristopher Green wrote:
>>>
>>>> Chuck Scmidt wrote:
>>>>
>>>> One additional note here: you just know that if today's bike
>>>> messengers knew about how the hard men (Ted's a Charter Memeber)
>>>> braked the front tire with their hand back in the day, they'd be all
>>>> over it.
>>>>
>>>> ______________
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yup.
>>>>
>>>> http://tinyurl.com/
>>>>
>>>> Kristopher John Hicks-Green
>>>> Olympia, Washington (State)
>>>> United States of America