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They had the big picture sorted. Pneumatic tires, drop bars and springless racing saddle. The riding position is bad, short top tube, very tall frames requiring a BMX style mounting peg on the left rear axle, hunched shoulders, and unstandardized components. They were still influenced by the upright riding position of the high wheelers. They were also influenced by horse riding, thus the left side mounting peg for mounting the bike on the left side. When this bike was new they still raced two classes, safety and high wheeler. A lot of racers still thought the solid tire high wheelers were better. They were faster. It took many decades for a safety bike to beat the high wheeler times. There may still be a high wheeler track record that hasn’t been bested, but last I was aware of this was 2014 and it may have been beaten now. Some track racers in England recently tried to match this record using the same high wheeler technology. They didn’t’t come close. On one of my 1900 bikes the riding position feels like your in front of the pedals, sort of like pushing more backwards than down. The second photo kind of illustrates this. It’s amazing how far they rode with this technology. It’s not a real enjoyable ride, but they didn’t know any better.There has to be a cinch bolt, or the handlebars would move up and down.
Point is, if you have to cinch it down anyway...why thread it in?
You could have lock nuts on both sides of the stem, but why two nuts instead of a single cinch bolt?
It's a solution without a problem
yup crazzey!
CCM did the same thing on there racer in the 1900
The threads on the bars don’t show, their all inside the gooseneck clamp. That’s what stymied me. The rust, dirt and grease crud obscured the threads, even after soaking. When I could finally see them on the bars I thought it was something like knurling so the clamp would work better. I finally thought that I’d see if they moved out by turning, not easy after 125 years. Force turn, force turn, yeah it’s moving apart, more penetrant, screw it back in, then out, then in several times until it came out all the way. Just a pinch clamp would have been so much faster. The only thing I can think of is that you can easily center the bars in the gooseneck, but that’s easy enough to do without the threads. I washed them in simple green and their now soaking in rust remover. The pedals have a thin rubber strip next to the anti slip teeth, I think it’s to help the pedal teeth with slipping. The simple green started to dissolve the rubber, it’s soft and gooey.There has to be a cinch bolt, or the handlebars would move up and down.
Point is, if you have to cinch it down anyway...why thread it in?
You could have lock nuts on both sides of the stem, but why two nuts instead of a single cinch bolt?
It's a solution without a problem
