guidogad

Quick stupid question. When did recessed brake mounts appear? I’ve got an 81 bike with recessed bolts and a 78 bike without. What happened 79 and 80?

guidogad

Done a bit of looking at pictures. Seems 1979 is mostly recessed on good bikes, and 1978 appears to be a mix. Is that about right?

Ex Pres 

There were still plenty of nutted brake bridges out there in the early 80's, even on some upper-end bikes. But I think you're right on the appearance of recessed very late 70's.

What I find fun are the bikes with one recessed (fork), and one nutted (rear). Sometimes paired with one set of water bottle braze-ons. Just peachy all-around.

T-Mar

As noted, not all manufactures introduce a feature at the same time. The earliest confirmed adoption of recessed brake bolts by a component manufacturer, that I've come across, was Zeus on their 2000 series in 1975. Shimano offered it it on Dura-Ace EX circa 1979. I don't believe it appears in Campagnolo catalogues until 1982. Having said that, their were some smaller companies, such as OMAS, offering conversion sets for Campagnolo brakesets prior to 1982. This feature has been discussed previously and IIRC the earliest example that surfaced was on a Masi, reportedly circa 1972.

Edit: I found one of the earlier threads on this subject. https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...akes-when.html

guidogad

I find it bizarre that catalogue references are so thin for a brand like Colnago. I did a bit of reading the last couple of weeks and was surprised how little is known for sure. Good luck with your research.
When looking at the appearance of recessed brake nuts I looked at a lot of Colnagos actually and found that virtually all bikes described as 1979 had recessed nuts (and Campy brakes of course), with 1978 being a mix in my random sample.
Either those bikes are younger, Campagnolo joined the party before 1982 (@T-Mar is usually right though), or all are converted. Odd.