joe v

Anyone familiar with 'Zeta' tubing? I'm interested in a Faggin bike built with this. Can't seem to find much info,

thanks,

Joe

Otis

It's their lower end non butted tubeset, later called Alle. But it's not bad stuff. Still can build into a light nice riding frame.

Not sure on the Faggin, but I had a Zeta Bianchi that rode very nicely and built into a honest 21.5 lb complete bike.

Mike01

Zeta was the cheapest tubeset that Columbus produced in the late 70s/early 80s. Straight gauge tubing like Aelle but not the same, Zeta was 0.9mm in thickness and Aelle 0.8mm. Still it´s good quality stuff that will build into a nice frame as you say. I remember Faggin used to build a lot of very nice, very detailed frames in the 80s using mainly Aelle tubing.

dejaviewcambio

Good info mike- I just found this[PDF] [h=3]TUBI SPECIALI PER BICICLETÏE SPEGIALI[/h]www.os2.dhs.org/~john/catalogs/Columbus-tubes.pdf
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costituiscono la serie ZETA. Le serie COLUMBUS' AELLE e ZETA vengcno fornite in tre iunghezze di tubi. difierenti: Composizicne A per teiai fino ai 57 ...


people tend to argue that if a bike has a 27.2 seatpost it must be Columbus SL- but columbus SL is listed as having the same wall thickness as zeta (at the columbus site above) and I see bikes with zeta tubing-like one of mine-having 27.2 seatposts-what's up?

T-Mar

Zeta is plain gauge tubeset, which means the wall thickness does not vary. SL is a butted tubeset, which means the main tubes are are thicker at the ends, where there is more stress, but thinner in the middle to save weight. The butts in the SL main tubes are the same thickness as Zeta but elsewhere they are 0.3mm thinner. Now, the seat tube on SL is single butted, meaning it's thicker only at the bottom bracket end. The seat post end has walls that are 0.3mm thinner. Since the outside diameter is standard (28.6mm) that means SL should take a 0.6mm larger post.

SL has a theoretical inner diameter of 27.4mm while Zeta's is 26.8mm. For clearance, manufacturers use a post 0.2mm under this, typically 27.2mm for SL and 26.6mm for Zeta. Now, some manufacturers did ream out the seat tubes so they have to stock less sizes of posts and it's a fairly common practice on SP tubesets (which is 01mm thicker than SL) but I have never heard of this being done on Zeta. That's removing a lot of material consider that Zeta is a carbon steel and not anywhere near as strong as the chromium molybdenum steel alloy used in SL. Zeta was basically a very lightweight hi-tensile steel. Are you sure your frame is Zeta?