Lambert was kind of the Tucker Torpedo of bicycles, bold innovation but a c ommercial failure. The Omnipotent Listmeister has a very nice early lugg ed Lambert. And I just received one badged as Viking - the first generat ion lugged Lamberts were badged as Viking or Reg Harris or Lambert, all the same except the decals.
Some of Lambert's stuff was pretty good, like the pedals and hubs. But t he RD was a relatively clunky copy of a Huret Svelto, the pressed-in BB's o n the later fillet-brazed frames were hard to service, the crankarms, at le ast for a time, had no taper, and so tended to loosen, and I've heard the s leeve in the center of the Lambert bars tended to come loose. And of cou rse there was the notorious Death Fork. an aluminum fork that could crack a nd fail. Don't know how many forks actually failed suddenly, probably a very small percentage, but it doesn't take many such failures to create a h uge product liability problem for a manufacturer. This was probably a pr imary reason for the takeover of the company by Yamaha, who replaced the tr oublesome fork with a conventional steel one and over the next few years re placed most of the unique Lambert parts with conventional, usually Japanese , ones.
Lamberts, particularly the early ones, are an interesting piece of cycling history, even if not all the innovations were successful ones.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Bog Spring, Texas, USA
From: Jon Spangler <hudsonspangler@earthlink.net> Subject: [CR]Lambert "Gruppo" on ebaykind To: "Dale Brown" <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org> Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 2:09 AM
Listers,
Here is an unusual listing. (Lambert was proof that not every new technological innovation is a good one.) Not sure where lambert's innovations fit in the overall CR acceptability list, but it is of historical interest, sort of like Teledyne:
http://ebay.com/
Not-associatedly yours,
Jon Spangler
Alameda, California USA