Not About Bikes, But Necessary

Ca. 1978 Doug Fattic

Some stories are weird, some wonderful, and some top them all. Like this:

A few years ago I received an email from Doug telling me that he himself had gotten a message from a German cycle dealer who was about to sell up and who was wondering what to do with an old frame he had had knocking about his shop for years. The dealer had found out Doug´s email as it was his name on the down tube.

 

It became clear that the dealer had a great number of rare items in his shop besides the frame, so I motored down to Southern Germany to help him get rid of it all which wasn´t very complicated as it just took the opening of my trusty 740 Volvo´s tailgate, shoving in a great number of boxes filled with things like after market titanium bits for Campag NR/SR, and the handing over of a rather moderate amount of money. Oh yes, the tailgate had to be closed again, too, which wasn´t too easy.

It seems that the Fattic frame is very lightweight indeed (the bike as pictured in this post weighs 8.6 kilos) and made from Tange tubing. Doug remembers that it was one of his first frames, and that he did not yet paint his frames at the time. How it got to Germany? My guess is that a serviceman must have brought it over as the bikeshop who sold it to me was rather close to a major US base.

The frame is equipped with Zeus 2000 rear dropouts for weight reasons.

 

Not to be discovered easily: A lily under the bottom bracket. Also the gear cable routing was progressive for the time: Many frame builders would still route over the b/b during the mid-seventies.

And another one, more easily noted.

And here´s for the bits I´ve hung from the frame for the time being.

The alloy bolt is from one of the weight weenie boxes, as is…

… this filed SR crankset c/w lightweight b/b axle and nut.

These did not come in the stash. They were from the private boxes of a wholesaler I cleared out about 18 years ago.

 

All pretty much standard and will have to undergo lightweight treatment eventually if I find out how to. The Deltas were already in the frame when I got it.

The knurled ring under the wing nut is alloy – another weight weenie bit as they usually are made from steel. Saves two grammes per piece.      

The Normandy/Simplex combo is lighter than Campag. One front, one rear – sensible with the Weltmeisters being that lightweight.

Still a lot of work to do, like rebuilding the rear derailleur with some bits from the boxes, but already it´s a wonderful bike, to say the least.

Amazing Figures

When receiving the annual statistics the other day I thought I´d fall over backwards: Last year servers from 97 different countries tried to get at starostneradost contents. My guess is that in this day and age of encrypting and other still more cryptic things going on on the net, not all of these countries will actually have detailed readers to check on my blog, but even if there´s only people from 50 countries who were honestly interested in what I´m doing I´d be very pleased. The countries with the most readers were Germany, the US and the UK, in this order.

My posts were viewed 19.000 times in all in 2014, which I consider to be one more amazing figure. Sure, Sinéad O´Connor´s “Nothing Compares to You” – video on youtube has had more than 123 million clicks, but then again I´m not (yet) quite as bald as her, so it´s OK. I´m content with any figures as long as at least some of you are with what I´m doing.

Until recently I thought that whenever I hit the “publish” button, at least my followers would receive and read what I´d written, but it seems that most of them are spammers – which wordpress doesn´t allow to remove from the list. It´s very strange that whenever I publish a book review there´s at least a couple new followers, none of which has an interest in bikes visible at the surface, but all of which have either books to sell or advice to give on how to write or to sell them.

So, a happy new year to all readers, visitors, followers and spammers alike, and I hope to be able to carry on blogging in a way which won´t waste your time. And hopefully see you on April 19.