Trakhak

True hype. The designed-in imprecision of the Centeron pulley making precise indexing easy to achieve and maintain was probably the main reason Shimano was able to obliterate the competition so staggeringly rapidly, despite missteps like BioPace.

Chuck M 

How did he feel about the Walmart/Shimano partnership?

Maelochs

A I and @indyfabz have mentioned ... Shimano licenses its name and probably the computer file for its logos, and anyone who buys a lot of Shimano parts can also buy the rights to print and apply so many labels .... and even if someone wanted to counterfeit labels, those fake labels would need to look exactly like real Shimano labels or no one would think they were real Shimano labels, or parts.

A brand like Columbia, which sells a fairly high volume of low-end bikes, likely mostly equipped with an equal volume of low-end Shimano parts, would buy the rights to use the Shimano logo for the same reason all the other manufacturers do.

Not a lot of rocket science involved here.

Trakhak

A I, huh? Reported . . . .

If anyone is interested (I was curious after reading the above), Columbia is currently owned by Ballard Pacific, whoever they are, and the bikes are sourced from China.

Here's a great article on Columbia's history that can be read on The Cabe.

Maelochs

Apparently one of the few marques not owned by Pon Holdings ......

smd4

I run 7700 Dura Ace. Shimano deciding to put their name on $50 dollar toy kids' bikes with plastic parts and training wheels means nothing to me or my perception of Shimano, or Shimano's quality.

13ollocks

That's nothing - out on the road today, I saw a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.......

bikecrate

I made that. I can't believe you guys remember it. I checked my hard drive to see if I saved it, but no.
Wait, I pulled it out of the old baby bolts thread. Was it this you were talking about? I could see it, but had a watermark in the middle.

Maelochs

Hall of Fame material .....

smd4

You can get exceedingly precise index shifting without using a "Centeron" pulley. Maybe even more precise than with it.

Ask me how I know.

mstateglfr 

Next, you should look for a Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac. It may take you about 19 years to see it though, at least going off of recordings.

dedhed

Should have a 10mm socket as well.

Trakhak

Sure. You can, and so can I. Most mechanics would have to waste a lot of time achieving it, though, to say nothing of the average bike owner. Which is why you and I feel justified in boasting about being able to do it, and why the invention of the Centron pulley catapulted Shimano's presence in the bike market from prominent to dominant.

smd4

I agree the Centeron probably forgives a wide range of mechanical sins, especially for those who may not be meticulous about bike maintenance. I'm not sure it was the sole reason for the massive success of Shimano's foray into index shifting in the mid-1980s.

Trakhak

Agreed; absolutely. But whatever the combination of factors was that got Shimano to where they are today, it probably didn't include (to name the first four that come to mind) Pitch 10, Direction 6, DynaDrive, or RapidRise!

seypat

I'd put it second behind Suntour's patent expiring on their slant parallelogram RD. Or, maybe third behind that and Simplex's blunder to use Delrin on their derailleurs. Their high end stuff(non Delrin) was as good as any out there.

smd4

You forgot Positron!

Trakhak

Thought about it, but didn't that stick around for at least a few years, paired with the (aptly named, in retrospect) FFS drivetrains?

By the way, I imagine few people on Bike Forums remember Direction 6. I am here to inform them that Direction 6 was Shimano's early stopgap design that allowed 6 sprockets to fit in a frame with a 120-mm over-locknut dimension.

For those who don't remember that exceedingly short-lived folly:

Suntour had just introduced their 6-speed narrow-spaced freewheels, so Shimano naturally had to respond, and without paying a licensing fee to Suntour for the use of their design.

Their workaround: the drive-side hub flange was "stepped' to permit all of the spokes to be installed head out/elbow in on that side. That, plus judicious axle spacing, gave just enough extra clearance to allow the derailleur to shift the chain to the innermost of the six sprockets without hitting the spokes. Theoretically.

I wanted to post a picture of a Direction 6 hub, but no combination of search words has worked.

There were maybe two Shimano technical bulletins that covered Direction 6 (back in the era when every bike shop was thoughtfully sent a New York City telephone book-sized technical manual, which swelled to alarming proportions as the bulletins covering ever-newer Shimano products flowed steadily in).

If anyone out there can find one of those tech sheets, please post it here, or at least a picture of the hub. Because I'm starting to think I dreamed it up. (Over-active imagination or incipient senility?)

smd4

I remember rounded-over locknuts to be able to easier spread open the dropouts. Is that the same?

indyfabz

That’s it! When I would look at the thread later in life, I couldn’t see the photo.

Saved to Photos.