If you'll recall, I engaged Wes on the CR list on exactly this point; he said that racks (at least racks of the luggage-toting variety) were a no-no. Now, there are racks and there are *racks*. There's photographic evidence of a number of TA and Sologne centerpull-mounted handlebar bag racks, but those are more decorative than load-bearing accessories.
In my case, a deal for my Plan B frameset (late '50s Frejus Tour de France) fell through, and my Plan A bikes (early '60s Follis Tour de France, 1972 Follis 472) were both a little too small to ride for distance without putting me in traction. I have a late '80 Bianchi Specialissima that would have worked, had I just rerouted the aero cables out the top of the levers and wrapped new bar tape (overdue anyway). But there's an open question whether that bike is 1987 or 1988; I didn't want to drive 200 miles and get into an argument, and I didn't want to violate the spirit of the occasion. I spent the better part of a month trying to make the older Follis ride bigger, with VO's parallel bars (an imitation of the 1950s Philippe Professionel) and a longer stem. Then I snapped the mounting bracket for the old Gran Sport DT shifters, which revealed that the frame was metric tubing...that sent me into my parts box to unearth a Simplex Juy 59 pullchain derailleur and complementary Simplex Competition suicide lever front. Experiments with those proved that I don't really understand how to set them up safely, much less properly. I had a number of scary experiences with thrown chains at speed, and one harrowing moment where I managed to cross-chain the big ring to the big cog, only to see the rear derailleur cage flatten out and see the chain run through the cage without touching the pulleys at all :-0 Kind of a shame I couldn't take the Follis down to Paso Robles, which had probably fifty people around who could have shown me how to correctly set up that Fifties vintage drivetrain. Of course, I could have stripped the racks, the lights and the generator front wheel off my Raleigh International pack mule and been good to go (TA triple, Huret Duopar+Campy NR, Mafac centerpulls), even with the hills and the rutted roads. But then I'd have had to build the thing back up afterward. I basically live on that bike, and I need all those extras. Peter "horses for courses" Adler Berkeley, CA/USA On Thursday, April 16, 2015 at 1:17:48 PM UTC-7, [email protected] wrote: > > Where I probably could have easily rode in on my old touring bike, > with racks and cantis and triple crank... how fair would that be to > everyone else playing the game to their own personal best? > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
