Fred,
I hadn't heard of 201 tubing before and only read about it from this
link;
http://www.bikebrothers.co.uk/
I don't know anything about steel and alloy grading what do the numbers relate to?
I'd be very interested to hear of are any frames out there built from 40 Wel and how this would compare to Reynolds 531 on the same frame. The chances of a direct comparison of a Carlton Pro in 531 and 40 Wel are, well, rather slim. Lots of frame builders produced low end machines in non-Reynolds tubing and top end frames in 531 so find the use of Tru-Wel and Falck tubing on higher end frames quite fascinating.
I presume that Carlton offered both tubing simultaneously either to keep Tru-Wel satisfied as team sponsor while keeping up with market demands for the most popular tubing.
Best regards
Julius Naim, London UK
> Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:33:08 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Fred Rednor <fred_rednor@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [CR]tru-wel tubing
>> My decal indicates tru-wel tubing was made by Ti, or part
>> of the Ti group. It's history before that I do not know.
>> I know of 3 different grades/types of tru-wel tubing;
>> (probably lower end) 205 I have on my frames, 201 used on
>> the Carlton Ten and (higher grade?) 40
>> Wel offered as a built to order option on the Carlton
>> professional.
>> I presume there produced more than these.
>> Here's a couple of links to a Cartlon 1970 catalog;
>> http://bulgier.net/
>> I have a Cobra which has a 205 decal
>> http://bulgier.net/
>> You can see from the fuzzy text the pro has a choice of
>> tubing, I
>> have seen a price list from the time and the 40 Wel option
>> was more
>> expensive than the 531 although that doesn't mean it was
>> necessarily
>> better but it was probably more comparable. I believe that
>> other
>> manufacturers that used tru-wel tubing included Raleigh and
>> Dawes
>> although which grade and for which end of their line I do not
>> know.
>>
>> There were the teams; Carlton-Truwel (although I think in
>> full this
>> was Carlton-Truwel-Campagnolo) and Sun-Truwel
>> (Sun-Huret-Truwel). I
>> presume that Tru-Wel was quite strongly linked to the Worksop
>> factory but I know little more that that.
>
> Julius,
> Between your messages, related to Tru-Wel, and John
> Thompson's quesions about Falck tubing, my curiosity about
> these "lesser known" tubesets was truly piqued. Actually, I
> knew about Falck because we actually often saw it on the
> Italian bikes imported into New York City when I was much
> younger.
>
> But let's get back to Tru-Wel... really I'd never heard of the
> stuff before, but then I'm no expert on Carlton or Raleigh
> bicycles. But after a little research and deep thought,
> here's my theory about the Tru_Wel grades:
> 40 Wel: Tru-Wel's name for their 4130 Chrome-Moly tubes
> 205: tubing from type 2050 mild steel
> 201: tubing from the type 2010 grade of steel? Does
> such such a grade exist?
>
> What puzzles me is why TI offered Reynolds and Tru-Wel tubing
> simultaneously?
> Fred Rednor - Arlington, Virginia (USA)