17 October, 2006

Notes

We recently ran across a batch of French sized, gold colored Edco competition headsets. Edco of Switzerland made some of the finest classic components and their quality rivaled or exceeded Campy's. If you have a French bike you would be hard pressed to find a nicer headset. the wholesale price on these was $59, so retail was probably near $100. They are $36in the store.

The lugs on our randonneur frame will be Henry Hames, rather than Kalavinka. Johnny, our builder found that the Henry James lugs are a much better match for the geometry and thought they would result in a straighter and better aligned frame. And we both feel that proper alignment is the basis for a good frame. Fortunately the Henry Lames lugs look very much like the Kalavinkas and the cost is about the same.

The hammered Honjo fenders have arrived. Again, these are not the special type that Honjo is making for us, but are nonetheless very nice. We also have some Honjo hardware.

We now include 1/4" p-clamps with our flashlight brackets. This allows the brackets to be mounted on racks without threaded eyelets. They are also available separately. However we are eliminating the leather pads for the brackets because we simply cannot find an adhesive or tape that will secure them to our satisfaction. I suggest that you put a wrap of bar tape around your flashlight instead.

The Nitto shim that allows 25.4mm handlebars to fit a regular 26mm road stem is a very useful item that's sometimes hard to find. So we've decided to stock them.

The Davos frames and bikes we were trying to import are no longer available. I was told the builder retired, he was over 70, and they simply had not taken the web page down. But I'm now on the trail of a similar Japanese bike.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

how about some of those smooth 35mm honjos? nudge. nudge.

crawley said...

how about some like this,

http://homepage1.nifty.com/ct-seizan/h58.jpg

?

crawley said...

Chris, check out this site. very cool bikes. Very cool chainrings too. Click on custom-made chainring link at bottom of page, and then chainring samples.

James said...

I found a gallery
on the site mentioned above.

James said...

another thing you cannot buy here, a fender mounted headlamp

crawley said...

sorry, i forgot to post the link.

Velo Orange said...

Crawley, Thanks for the link. Very cool.

James, I just found a fender mounted headlamp in Europe and I'm going to try to order some this week.

James said...

I noticed you had a generic headlamp for sale as a fender mounted light and had meant to suggest the much nicer dutch Axa headlamp, as used on Pashely, Gazelle etc. It wasn't designed to be used on a fender but might look good mounted to the side of a front rack. I have a spare and might try to use it as a second headlamp on the Bleriot I am building.

Anonymous said...

Is there a reason so many of the bikes on this japanese site have the QR skewer mounted on the starboard side? other than fashion, that is....
Michael Burdge

Velo Orange said...

Anon, I think we'll have 35mm Honjos next week.

Crawley, we can actually get some fenders like that. But we'd have to have 100 pair made. Hmmmm...

James, do you have a link to that light? I don't see it on the Basta-Axa Corp. site.

James said...

You can see it on the Pashley website, I have a couple around here and will take a photo when I find them.

James said...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61977357@N00/280238127/
The Axa lamp a pretty nice headlamp for an old design and has a feel of quality to it that the usual chinese copies of Miller headlamps lack.

Velo Orange said...

That AXA light does look nice. If I can't get the B&M rero-light I'll try for the AXA. Do you know the model name or number?

James said...

Gilbert might know
http://www.northroadbicycle.com/

James said...

Have you considered offering a simple single dutch pannier set, something like the clarijs fietstassen. http://www.clarijscovers.com/
I saw some at the Jorg and Olif shop in Vancouver. They look a bit tacky in the photos, but in person they had a real quality look and feel to them. Clarijs is a small shop and one of the nicer dutch brands of cycle bags. Unfortunately the Jorg and Olif bicycle shop had ordered the models with a simple flat cover, which is what you'd want if you want an all weather bad. As far as I know there are no simple waterproof and attractive panniers of this type in the US, you zip tie them on the bike and forget about them. Someone ought to do something about it.

James said...

you can configure you bag fietstas samenstellen

James said...

I found the website of a japanese bike shop that might be of interest to velo orange readers. Riverone
The link takes you to their Honjo page that shows a variety of fenders not available here, inc. a copy of the Bluemels Tour de France. Many of their Honjos have an interesting design at the tip. Apparently this shop makes it's own touring bikes and minovelos.

Velo Orange said...

James,

That's a good site. Thanks.

Honjo has currently has 22 fender profiles, each available in 10 sizes. Then there are variations in length and hardware. And they are all made to order. You'll never see all of them in the US. But if the ones we have now sell well, we will try to bring in some other profiles. Asof today we have fenders with 4 of their profiles. I'll post about the two newest ones tomorrow.

James said...

Did you notice this page

Velo Orange said...

Those lights are stunning, but so are the prices. It seems to say that they are hand turned. If that's right, the prices are actually pretty reasonable. Still, how many $120 flashlights would folks buy? Hmmm.