Re: [CR]Cinelli 1R Problems

From: Edward Albert <ealbert01@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [CR]Cinelli 1R Problems To: tom_s_dalton@yahoo.com Cc: mikemullett@btinternet.com, "Classic Rendezvous" <classicrendezvous@bik elist.org>, "Ray Dobbins" <raydobbins2003@yahoo.com> Date: Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 12:43 PM

Tom,   I agree with many of your points because they seem not at all different from what I too believe.  However, one point you made that I really am i n agreement with, I quote, "I may be splitting hairs, but....."     :) Best Regards. Eddie (and I am not a Dr., I do not practice medicine, although I do someti mes play one on TV) Chappaqua, New York, U.S.A.

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 12:29 PM, Tom Dalton <tom_s_dalton@yahoo.com> wrote :

Eddie Albert wrote: Res Ipsa Locuitur. Again,  Freek, I believe is right on.  The stem did not hold the bars, i.e., it stunk!

Tom Dalton replies: Okay Dr. Eddie, now you've got me all worked up.  I must admit that I had to Google your Latin phrase to learn that it means "the thing speaks for i tself," but upon learning this I was left wondering "what thing?"  Are yo u suggesting that Hinault learned the hard way in the midst of the 1979 Tou r just how stinky the 1-R is and changed to a 1-A?  The 1-R had been arou nd since 1975 or so, and I think everyone knew what it was by 1979.  If i t was truly as bad as you assert, there is no way that anyone would still h ave been messing about with them four years later, and there's no way that Cinelli would still have been manufacturing them.   

Eddie also wrote:

I don't know who was or was not using stems that looked to be 1Rs.  But a gain, I will cling to my earlier assertion that those stems did not work pr operly and racers avoided them.  They may have tried them out, but soon a fter they switched back.

Tom Dalton replies: I agree that a lot of folks had problems with the 1-R and quickly moved awa y from them after a brief and unsuccessful trial.  I saw this several tim es in the day.  They were finicky stems, and for all their finickiness, t hey offered no obvious benefit beyond looking cool, and possibly being slig htly lighter.  I don't think they were ever the practical choice for work aday racers, just as SR bottom brackets and pedals and Regina titanium free wheels and chains were not practical choices.  As such, 1-Rs were usually only found on the Gucci bikes of poseurs and on the bikes of professional racers who enjoyed the highest level of technical support.   The guys y ou raced with in the 70's and 80's on the east coast in the pro-am crit cir cuit naturally rejected them, of course. 

Eddie also wrote:

Re: Cinelli pushing to have them ridden.  Of course he would have. Given the cost of sponsorship Cinelli would expect riders to use what he was sell ing.  However, as in the case of frames and other parts I would not be at all surprised at all if the 1R you see on a pros bike was not in fact eith er doctored to fix the problem or doctored to look like a 1R.  In the U.S . we all know about how AMF was not AMF, Huffy was not Huffy, etc, etc.  I can't imagine a pro rider taking the risk of his bars slipping down in th e heat of the action.  Just does not make sense to me.  But, of course, neither do a lot of other things.

Tom Dalton Replies: I disagree\u2026 with all of this.   Okay, not quite all of it, but most o f it.  Yes, Cinelli would, as a sponsor, expect riders to use what he was selling.  But he was also selling 1-As, so the real question is whether he pushed specifically for teams to use the 1-R, or if those pro riders (an d entire teams) that opted for the 1-R did so by preference.  Hard to ima gine why a rider would prefer the 1-R, though I do have one friend who swor e they soaked up the bumps a little better than 1-As (the extension was hol low).  It could be that Cinelli put pressure on teams to use the 1-Rs bec ause they sold for nearly twice the price of 1-As and were the flagship mod el.  It doesn't speak well of your parts when your "best" part is rejecte d and everyone uses your older, cheaper stuff, but who knows what Cinelli w anted?  What I do know is that the 1-R was not a stinky stem in that they were not fundamentally flawed in such away that the bars would inevitably slip.  They were temperamental and prone to problems.  If they were no t used in exactly the right way, they didn't work.  Properly set up they were reliable, even if sometimes a bit creaky.  The problem is that "prop erly set up" meant a couple of things.  Foremost, you needed to mate them to fresh Cinelli brand bars with the correct knurling.  The 1-A was very flexible; you could use many different makes and models of bar with the 1- A, even when the bar had the wrong diameter.  By comparison the 1-R was v ery restrictive.  This compatibility issue was the real problem, because other than top pros, riders wanted to be able to use whatever equipment the y have on hand and they wanted it to all work together.  This, I think, i s where the 1-Rs reputation as hopelessly deficient, as voiced by you, find s its basis.  Many, many people bought them and tried to use them with so me old bar they had lying around.  Even the correct models of Cinelli bar would not work if the knurl was not fresh.  Then there is the matter of getting it tight.  The little wedge, the pressure plate, the bolt thread and the bolt head all needed to be thoroughly greased before the bar was as sembled to the stem.  Then the binder needed to be torqued down very hard .  If this wasn't done, the bar would slip, damaging the knurling, and at that point there was no hope of ever getting that bar to hold again. 

Another problem was that there was zero documentation included with these s tems.  They came in an otherwise empty plastic bag.  Users would need t o figure out the stem's quirks by themselves, and I suspect they rarely did before just trashing the 1-R stem.  Pro teams likely figured out the 1-R s limitations after a short time, possibly with input from Cinelli, and giv en that they had deep reserves of fresh bars, it was not really a steep lea rning curve to figure out that the knurl needed to be pristine. 

I think your assertion that all the stems used in the pro peloton were eith er doctored 1-Rs or other models doctored to look like 1-Rs is way off the mark.  I have seen 1-A's with little black dot stickers on the front, but that was rare and it was completely obvious what was going on.  As for o ther models of stem that were doctored to look like 1-Rs, I can't imagine w hat they would be.  The only common stem that looked similar was a Nitto made Dura Ace stem that was significantly different and was not introduced until the very late 70's or early 80s.  No, all those stems that look lik e 1-Rs in all those pictures from the European pro races in the 1980's were , in fact, 1-Rs.  There are plenty of very close-up pictures to confirm t his.  So, this leaves the matter of whether the 1-Rs in use were routinel y modified by team mechanics to overcome some tragic flaw.  I say, "no wa y."  For one thing, I have never noticed any modification in any picture of a 1-R on a pro's bike, and I have never even heard of any modifications that were done.  Harvey's speculation was interesting, as was Ray's pic of his modified stem, but this says nothing about what pro team mechanics w ere really doing. Ray's bike is, as far as I know, not a former team bike.   You will also note that the image he provided shows obvious damage to t he knurl.  Ray's fix was likely necessary to get that particular bar to s tay in place.  I seriously doubt that this was the standard setup for all 1-R equipped pro bikes.  It involves drilling a hole into the stem and t he bar in a highly stressed area.  In a racing situation that just woul dn't be smart, and it would be so much of a hassle to do this to every sing le bike that there is no way that the mechanics would have bothered.  The y would have just used the 1-A, and in many cases they did. 

I looked through my Winning Magazine yearbooks from 1984 and 1985 last nigh t, and I was surprised to see that the 1-A vs 1-R balance actually came dow n even more strongly in favor of the 1-R than I had thought.  There were some really good examples of the 1-R being used in conditions that suggest they were trusted.  There is a picture of Vanderaarden winning the sprint on the Champs Eylesees with a 1-R and Criterium bars.  There is a pic of Anderson on an early low-profile TT bike with cowhorns and a 1-R.  If th at's not a test of stem grip, what is?

Overall, I will concede that the 1-R was a problematic stem.  You needed to handle it just so.  However, it was not unable to do its job due to so me basic flaw.  It was silly in the way that a lot of exotic lightweight racing parts are silly, but without any clear (or even implied) performance benefit.  Still, they looked sweet, and they work just fine if you use f resh bars and handle them correctly.  Basically, they suffered from a nee d for coddling and a lack of documentation to indicate what form that coddl ing must take.  I may be splitting hairs, but I think there is a basic di fference between a design that "stinks," and simply cannot be made to work, and a design that is problematic and impractical outside or specific envir onments (well supported teams, in this example).  To me the fact that 1-R s were used successfully by pros, and unsuccessfully by others (leading to their rejection at lower levels) makes the 1-R cool.  I didn't use them i n the day, because of the cost, and the reputation, and basically because I was not a sponsored pro, but I have several now and I'm happy that I do. 

Finally, I want to point out that the rejection of the 1-R outside of the t op pro ranks (and in many cases within) is a great example of how things re ally were different in the CR timeframe.  These days it is taken in strid e that certain parts require specific anti-seize compounds, or thread locki ng compounds, that you need special saw baldes for cutting carbon steerers and masts, that drivetrains needing to be very clean and cables carefully l ubed, that you need special brake pads depending on the rim material, etc., etc. Compatibility issues are so widespread that they aren't even recogniz ed, you just "use as directed," without ever consdering mixing barnd S wi th brand C.  These days, people are either using their bikes in a state that is far below ideal, or they do a lot of very careful, fussy mechanica l work.  Usually it's the former.  In the 1980's this kind of thing was really frowned upon.  Parts like the 1-R, Super Record BBs and pedals, alloy freewheels, toeclips, saddle rails and bottle cages, even Super Reco rd headsets and seatposts, were all pushed to the margins by racers "in the trenchs" because they weren't practical.  I guess this is why many of us long for those days, because among racers what was practical was embraced and what was silly and exotic was generally rejected.  There is analogous practical equipment now; even when a bike has 10 cogs, clipless pedals, an d 20 spokes per wheel, it can be practical for racing.  However, there is also now a preponderance of impractical crap, and it seems to be the norm for amateur racers, and even Sunday dabblers, to seek it out rather than to reject it. I think it is this, rather than the specific mechanical details (steel vs. carbon, friction vs STI, etc) that differentiates the CR era fr om today.

Anyway, you can use 1-Rs without problems if you do it just so, but that ki nd of caveat was not acceptable in the day, even if it now is among modern riders with modern bikes.  To have a 1-R on a period bike is in some way not period correct, because serious (non-pro) riders rejected them.  Stil l, I can make them work, and so I mount them on certain bikes because the y were the exotic-cool choice of the day, and many pros did use them, inclu ding some of Post's Raleigh boys.

Tom Dalton
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA