This bike must predate the advice to carry at least 50% of a touring load on the front wheel. A rack mounted to the cantilever posts like that probably can't carry much weight.
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Instead of having a return spring, the Cyclo rear derailleur is operated by a pull-pull cable like Positron (remember those? I didn't think so). It rotates on a helical post which causes it to move in and out. The large spring extending forward from the upper pulley controls chain tension. Apparently these units are very reliable and shift well by the standards of their time, but only cope with a narrow range of rear gears. I'm not sure what the C shaped braze-on over the derailleur mount is for.
The hand-operated front derailleur looks pretty crude but shifts over a wider range than most modern ones will handle well. Note the nicely finished cotterless cranks, which would've been very unusual at the time. Most bikes sold in the US still had cottered cranks 20 years later.
I'm puzzled by the headlight. The bike doesn't have a generator hub or any provision for a bottle generator and wiring. The owner could always mount a clamp-on bottle generator and sort out the wiring themselves, but it seems like an odd thing to leave off of such an otherwise complete package.
It's geared too narrow for my needs, it probably shifts a lot worse than modern equipment, and replacement parts are just about impossible to find, but I want one anyway.
4 comments:
Somewhat reminds me of something out of a Godard film.
1 box down, many more to go.
I would imagine Goodwill would toss a circa 1998 version of _Resumes for High-Tech Careers_ so in the recycling bin it goes along with similarly outdated BS I've saved for far too long.
You mean my Office 97 skillz are no longer marketable?
Apparently not since I've also tossed circa '99 _Programming Microsoft Outlook and Exchange_ (server 5.5) in the recycling.
Just came across _Change in Byzantine Culture in the 11th and 12th Centuries_. I’m tempted to send it to the Goodwill, but think I’ll save it as a reminder of useless stuff I studied for no discernable reason.
I threw away a Pascal book, a Unix System V manual, and an 8086 assembly textbook when I moved. I find that Internet resources have made technical books mostly redundant as day-to-day reference material. However, it's hard to find stuff on the internet that gives for lack of a better word a philosophical introduction to a language or system -- the why of it rather than the how.
I still can't quite bear to part with a 6 volume English history series that I've never actually read.
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