Originally Posted by
verktyg
ARGH!
During the Bike Boom Fad era from the late 60's to the early 70's, the buzz word was 10 SPEED RACING BIKE!
Back then bikes were still considered to be "KIDS TOYS"!
Anything with 2 wheels, drop bars and derailleurs were marketed to unwitting customers and sold as quickly as they could be unpacked.
Poorly constructed gas pipe department store bikes cost ~$59.95 USD. They were unsafe at any speed. A few were butt brazed but most of them had resistance welded frames. The tubes were pushed against each other, an electrical charge was applied and hoppefully the tubes fused together at the joint. Like spot welding. Saw many of them where the head tube was so poorly welded that it broke away from the top and down tubes while being ridden.
Kid Killer bikes like those were what caused the ill conceived CPSC (US Consumer Protection Safety Commission) rules to be instituted. Those kinds of bikes used the absolute cheapest components available and they were frequently assembled by inexperienced store clerks or customers ala Ikea.
Waxing poetic about those bent pieces of pipe and calling them handles bars is stretching the definition!
verktyg
retro grouch
The memories of Iversons - the worst of the worst (worse than Murray, Huffy, or Rollfast) - sold only thru catalog (the forerunner of big box) stores immediately comes to mind. We had a couple of Iversons, not one summer's old, dropped off at AR Adams Cycle with the steerer tube sheered off cleanly from the top and down tubes. And the customers wanted to get them fixed!
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Syke
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
H.L. Mencken, (1926)