Originally Posted by Mad Honk

@doug Fatic,
That rule is still in effect. I was the chief steward for the race during the late 70's and early 80's so I was in charge of being sure they were all the same. That meant a lot of late night bike checks and calling offending teams to come change front chain rings and rear rings to hold the gearing the same for all teams. I also required 3X spoke patterns to keep chances of wrecks with injuries. So many teams tried to make a change to radial lacing for the wheels. My thought process was the radial spoke pattern would break down from the hard braking force applied during every exchange of rider. The idea was to prevent riders from serious injury from mechanical failures. Having to call a team mechanic and tell him that the rear hub was assembled wrong and the braking mechanism would not work was not a pleasant thing to do. I heard a lot of belly-aching from riders and mechanics but there were no serious injuries during my watch for the race.
AMF was the major supplier of race bikes during that time. In the nineties the Student Foundation moved to a bidding process for race suppliers and there have been multiple suppliers since then. My racing days were on the old track and football stadium that was used for the last time to film Breaking Away, and then torn down and turned into an Arboretum. There is now a Bell Tower that is roughly where turn one and two were on the track. The race today is run at the Armstrong Stadium and the infield is the home of our soccer team. I trust all is well for you and spring in southern Michigan has not been too harsh. Smiles, MH