markwesti

The Nitto Jag stem and Nitto 123B bars .

trainman999

It was hot 85+ Must have been a cross wind as the bike is wearing the 24 spoke wheel I made by radiil lacing the non drive side with every other spoke of a 32 spoke wheel, instead of a disc. Drank all the water I could before race and ran out of water shortly after the turn around, it was a dry ride back. The course is very flat and straight as I remember. The bike is not real comfurtable to ride but it likes to go fast and you get used to it if you ride it reguraly. Once it is moving 15-20 mph its very stable, at parking lot speeds it's a pig.
I have a lot more memories racing it on the TT course around the North Park pool in Pittsburgh. Start finish was in middle of a hill some sweeping lefts and rights going down the back side and a crit left at the bottom of the start /finish hill, about a mile per lap. Its not bad climing out of the saddle, its good on the sweepers but it hated that crit left. Raceing it one night with a Mavic disc that weighed about 6 lb, and a clip on u shaped tt bar. A rider on a road bike that was slightly faster than me passes me as I am starting out, over the top streached out on the bars and I reeled him in about the middle of the course, figured would not see him again. Moving 30+ comming into the crit left had to stand on the front brake steering with left hand , go down a ring and up about 4or 5 on the cassett with right ( it does not like to make a crit left at speed ) out of the saddle up the hill and get passed at the start finish line. Same thing next 7 or 8 laps, pass him middle of the back side he passes me at the start/finish. Talked to him after the race,said he could hear the disc rumbeling getting closer but nothing he could do, it was way faster going down. As he could go through the left way faster than I could, he caught me at the start/finish.
On a hillie out and back course is was enough faster on the flats and down hills, with the disc and the bars if you passed some one they stayed passed.

P!N20

What do I win?

thinktubes 

vélo amusant...

P!N20

I'll pack my bags.

Here's another one for you:

P!N20

Can't help myself.

Reynolds 

Colnago Krono 55.291 1995 (from speedbicycles.ch)

markwesti

Nothing dramatic here , just a cool looking Vitus .

markwesti

I wasn't sure if I should post this ....Ahem .

malcala622 

All these awesome looking TT bikes in the thread got me drooling.

Soon ill post my Bianchi.

bulgie 

Some interesting details on one of the USA team bikes circa 1984. Not sure if this bike was used in the Olympics but I think not. Similar to some of the Oly bikes though. Owned by Jeff Groman I believe. I took these photos at a recent vintage bike show.
Super-narrow hub made by slicing a chunk out of the middle of a Campy, and gluing the pieces back together!



Clever lever! Twisted 90° to make it more aero.



Rear der. cable routed inside the chainstay, emerges from the back of the dropout.

bulgie 

Here's one I made at Davidson in the late '80s, intended primarily as a track pursuit, but with brake holes and provision for a rear derailer to use as road TT.


Here's a pic of the handlebar/stem I made for that bike, for use on the track (no brakes possible):


You can't tell from this angle, but all 4 tubes that connect the grips to the fork are airfoil shaped, long thin teardrop in section. The upper ones are bigger, the lower ones are sort of like "guy wires" to take the tension from pulling up during the start, which is a fairly violent effort.

The rest of the bike is fairly tame, just round tubes, but with some aero fairing behind the head tube similar to a Laser. I know, everyone did that...

I wish I had photos of some of the more radical TT bikes I made, with airfoil-shaped seat tube and down tube. Some of them had a seat tube that was curved and airfoil shaped, which is not easy... Some of them won national championships, a 5th at Worlds in the TTT, some medal in the Team Pursuit at the Pan-Am Games (I forget what color), new 40k record in the Junior Mens etc. Lots of those bikes would not be UCI legal anymore.

Advice to my younger self: POIDH!

Mark Bulgier

bulgie 

Here's a cool pic (not mine, found on the web) of Alexander Kirichenko breaking his handlebar in the '89 Worlds kilo TT (He got Bronze anyway!)

bulgie 

BTW, in case it's not obvious -- the celebrated Mr. K. wouldn't have broken his handlebar if it had been triangulated like the Davidson aero bar/stem that I showed a picture of in this thread – connecting both to the top of the steerer and to the fork crown. The thin airfoil tubes on mine are not strong by themselves against the violent pull in a Kilo TT standing start, but the power of triangles makes it much stronger than the bar Mr. K. broke. Oh also, my bar was Cr-Mo steel versus aluminum. Heavier, but probably several times stiffer and stronger than Mr. K's, and probably more aero as well.

No hills on the track, so weight is not a big factor in limiting TT speed. I'd rank the relevant factors as (#1) NOT breaking and (#2) aero drag, with "everything else put together" a distant third.

Whoever made Kirichenko's handlebar obviously underestimated how much force a giant steroid monster like that can exert for the first few pedal strokes of a Kilo start. From my work with top Match Sprint and Kilo riders, I learned to start with stiffer/stronger than you can imagine anyone needing – then double that! Ken Carpenter won several Nat'l Championships in Match Sprint on a bike I built him, after Masi and Serotta tried and failed to make a frame stiff enough for him. Admittedly, I had the Masi and Serotta frames to go by as references for what had been tried – what I had to exceed. Even so, the first frame I built for Ken, he deemed almost stiff enough! So I made the second one even stiffer, and that's the one he took to the Olympics, and won those championships on. Mere mortals can't imagine the horsepower these guys can unleash.

Mark

Reynolds 

Bador/Vitus 979:

Reynolds 

I'm not sure this is a real TT bike - the handlebar, front brake... more like a fan's tribute. But I like it anyway.

63rickert

I believe that is very early 90s. The frame is all carbon fiber. And of course on windy days you had a backup bike.

Last time I was at RRB Cycles there was one of these available for sale. Ron Boi was part of the team that made these and he could tell you all about it.

thinktubes 

Standard roller blade wheels if I recall correctly....

bulgie 

I haven't heard of any older than the 1970-'71 Carlton:

_

Here's an interview with a Raleigh product guy, showing some close-ups of the frame construction.
Disappointing that they put more modern parts on it, and newer decals (who would do that??) Apparently about a dozen were made, and some did get raced.

I had a mid-70s Exxon Graftek for a while but sold it before ever riding it, never got around to completely building it up... I know they were "good enough" because a lot of top USA riders (John Howard, Dale Stetina et al.) won races on them. They were known to break sometimes though. Here are my pics of mine, when it was for sale. It weighed under 17 lb complete, pretty good for a 63 cm frame. Some of the parts were crazy light though, like the Hi-E front wheel with aluminum "Siamese" spokes -- not sure if I would have ridden that wheel, at my weight, which is <mumble mumble> let's say a small fraction of a ton.

There were one or two other small companies in the US who made similar frames, carbon tubes glued into lugs, at about the same time as the Graftek. "Graphite USA" beat Exxon to market, but very few were sold. Exxon Graftek frames were produced in decent numbers and are not especially rare today.

Here's a Graphite USA frame, claimed to be from 1974. That might be the first frame with all tubes CF, since the Carlton used steel chainstays.

T-Mar

I believe that the first commercially available carbon-fibre framesets were the Mossberg Racelites X-1000 & X-1001. Depending on the source, they were available in either 1973 or 1974. They were definitely being featured in a couple of issues of Bicycling magazine in 1974, so maybe they were introduced in late 1973 for the 1974 model year. Back then, in the USA, the material was generically referred to as graphite as opposed to carbon-fibre.

T-Mar

While the Mossberg frames weren't earlier than the Carlton, please note that I made the distinction that the Mossberg were "commercially available". In other words, you could go into your local Mossberg dealer and purchase one. By all accounts I've read, the Carlton was extremely limited production and wasn't available to the general public. Basically, it was a team issue frameset used for R&D.

The Mossberg framsets sold for $600 US, while the complete bicycles were $1200 US and $1300 US.

P!N20

From here: '93 Geliano - please shed some light on this obscurity! | Retrobike

Edit: looks like the bike shop still exists, there's a neat little timeline here: https://www.velo-cycle-vtt.com/historique How's your French?

Looks like they made/sold some pretty wild looking frames and bikes. Apparently painted cranks and seat posts was a bit of a thing they did.

La Brea Bike

Not sure what the volume of that was, but I sold a few of those. BLB is associated with Aventon. (It's still the pic that comes up on my Yelp Account). I do dig that frame.

La Brea Bike

https://www.instagram.com/p/BAcdCV6B...id=cgrwkd0g6rq

If you have instagram... These are owned by Mitchell Button (ButtonBuilt) who is (mostly) a motorized vehicle builder (His Unimog inspired me to get one...).

La Brea Bike

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEJgmhIh...d=bmgoyou56o4j

I think he focuses on them as art more than anything...