On Thu, 11 Jul 2002 20:19:21  
 Joseph B. Reid wrote:
>Marcus in USMA 20950 displayed intense misdirected emotion.

???  'Intense misdirected emotion'???  Gee, I guess you're reading too much into my 
posts (as usual...), Joe.  If I 'fumed' it's because I have some "inside" information 
on this provided to me by an expert friend.  (Besides, you can go to some of the main 
European manufacturers' sites for competitive road bikes (Italians, French) and see 
for yourself that when it comes to designing they do design road bikes in metric terms 
(hard mm)).  I've seen a couple of catalogues myself (one of a Japanese company) where 
dimensions were spec'd in hard mm.

>  The British
>bicycle industry has from its beginning been totally non-metric.

The 'British' bike industry?  I'm sorry, but what a joke!  They don't even register in 
the spectrum of the most competitive bikes nowadays, Joe!  It's mostly Italian, 
French, Japanese (and now some American) frames that are carrying the day.  Names like 
Scattante, Shimano (especially for general bike parts), Mavic, Look, Compagnollo, 
Cinelli, Giant (Taiwan), Piccollo, etc, etc...

>  The usual
>tire diameter was 28" or 26" with a 1-3/8" cross section.

But now it's the 700, the 650's that are carrying the day, Joe!  Only the silly 26 
thing is pervasive in **mountain bike** bicycles (evidently, since it's been Americans 
who first came with this sport).

>  I believe
>European manufacturers have copied some of the imperial dimensions, such as
>chain link length.
>
True, but they all moved to designing in metric now (as far as I can tell).  
Therefore, all parts should have mm precision now.

Marcus

>Marcus wrote:
>
>>If you surf www.cannondale.com and the specific URL (among others...):
>>http://www.cannondale.com/bikes/02/cusa/model-2TR8.html
>>you'll notice the following reference under "fork":
>>' TIG-welded chromoly, 1 1/8" (SIC) '
>>
>>What made me fume is the fact that such dimension (diameter) has always
>>been hard metric in this industry (road bike) - 28 mm in this case.  Yet,
>>these guys are doing the same thing the computer industry is doing with
>>the 3 1/2" floppy size crap.
>>
>>I sent them an e-mail to ALL their customer support links (you can easily
>>get them by looking under contact us or something like that in their
>>website) and this is what they responded (the representative in Europe,
>>BTW!...):
>
>Joseph B.Reid
>17 Glebe Road West
>Toronto  M5P 1C8             Tel. 416 486-6071
>
>


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