Dear Steven or other CR members: Could someone please provide an image, or link to an image, of the "Frankenstein' bolts." I'd like to learn more about this topic but can't relate to the thread. It's pure ignorance on my part. Thanks for your trouble, George Hollenberg MD Westport, CT, USA
> In response to the Jan's posts about wingnuts and quick
> releases, I will
> stay away from the former topic as it would be way too easy ;-)
> however,
> as far as the latter topic, I have a completely different
> understanding.
> Jan claims that original pre-1950 Campagnolo Q/R skewers
> required tools
> to loosen off the nuts to adjust the width. It is my experience
> that
> this is not true in the least. Being pedantic, I believe that
> one can
> readily see that the sole nut used on the Campagnolo Q/R that
> can be
> adjusted with a wrench or tool, is the one holding the lever in
> place.
> These nuts have absolutely no impact whatsoever to skewer width.
> I
> therefore guess that Jan meant to write "frankenstein" bolts,
> but even
> here I feel that his interpretation is incorrect. These two
> bolts, found
> on early Campagnolo Q/R, that I suppose resemble those seen in
> Frankenstein's neck, thread into the cone-shaped skewer lock
> nut.
> Between the tip of these bolts and the skewer rod there is a
> brass disk.
> When you snug down the bolts, these disks prevent the bolts from
> both
> damaging and making a solid lock on the skewer rod. You can
> therefore
> still turn the skewer lock nut. You can still adjust the width
> to make
> up for a 1 mm width difference in dropout thickness. This slight
> adjustability was apparently deemed sufficiently important to
> encourage
> Campagnolo to use this more complex and costly solution over
> that of two
> counteracting nuts on the skewer itself (a bit like the cones
> and
> lock-nuts on the axles) In fact, in the patent application, it
> uses the
> verb 'bloccare' to describe the bolts action. 'Bloccare' is
> defined in
> the Italian dictionaries that I have at hand as: the arrest,
> immobilization or interruption of function or movement. The same
> dictionaries state that 'fissare' means to locate and/or apply
> in a
> stable manner by means of the occurrence of one or more points
> of
> contact. Had the goal of the bolts therefore been to make a
> solid,
> stable lock, Campagnolo should have used the word 'fissare' as
> it is the
> sole one that correctly describes a stable, unchanging lock. The
> word
> 'bloccare' has a meaning that indicates a more transitory
> locking. To
> therefore ascribe the delayed universal adoption of the hub Q/R
> to a
> problem with adaptability to drop-out thickness seems to be
> rather
> naive. Beyond which it should be pointed out that to this day,
> there is
> no standard drop-out thickness, nor has there ever been one. I
> measured
> some of my bikes and simple differences in paint and chroming
> alone
> account for at least 10% variation in actual drop-out
> thicknesses, when
> comparing bikes that were built with 'identical' dropouts.
>
> Steven Maasland
> Moorestown, NJ
> USA
>
> _______________________________________________
>
George Hollenberg MD
CT, USA