b-ride

just wondering if anyone has any info on some fiamme rims and shimano hubs? i bought a bike from a friend who had purchased a cramerotti track bike from some guy out of the buy&sell. anyhow, my friend took the rims that were on the cram and ended up putting them on the bike i bought from him. to make a long story shot i now have a set of fiamme tubular rims. the front is laced to an older looking shimano high flange hub stamped witha "z1" and the rear hub is also shimano stamped with a "y1". the rims look kinda old but are still true. the only label on them is a simple rectangular red "fiamme" sticker and they're both stamped with "fiamme italy". the hubs are both high flange and i suspect the rear could be a converted road hub- the cog and the lockring both thread on in the same direction. on the other hand, it's got exposed bearings... but maybe that's due to the conversion? i really don't know. i haven't been able to find anything about the rims on the net and finding out about the shimano parts is similarly difficult, i think because there's just too much out there to look through. anybody that has any info or links they could pass on, please do so. much appreciated.

b

lotek 

Fiamme is an old and respected rim supplier. The standard during
the boom years for high end rims were the Fiamme Red labels, weight wise
they were on a par with the Mavic Gel 330's, there was a lighter Fiamme
rim the Yellow which was a sub 165# rider rim, very light prone to folding
and great racing rims.
I have no info on the ShiamNo hubs tho.

11.4

Fiammes were one of the first ferruled rims, which allowed them to make them notably thinner than non-ferruled rims that had preceded them. The engineering wasn't quite worked out, and the alloys weren't what you get today, so they tended to split the ferrule rivet and the alloy was soft enough that they were rather prone to flat spots from hitting road irregularities. Because the alloy was so soft, at least they didn't actually split and fracture at the spoke holes. There's no anodizing, no finish of any kind except the decal, so they get a little oxidized with time and every drop of perspiration leaves its mark. They were definitely one of the nicest rims way back when, but I wouldn't think of them except for a classic restoration at this point. Also, they have a shallow tire bed, which doesn't mate well with most current tubular tires. As a result, you don't get as good a gluing job (you want your glue job to be as thin as possible for the greatest strength, and excess glue is detrimental to adhesion, but it's irrelevant if the tire only is glued on right at the stitching line). Frankly, the latter point would make me wary of them for track racing -- use them as a fixie and you should be OK.

As for your hubs, those are circa 1980-1982 Shimano Dura Ace track hubs, in their early configuration mostly for Japanese consumption. They have really good bearings and start out at least with a very nice satin finish. The spoke holes are drilled rather too close to the flange edge for my taste, so don't radial-spoke them, but people weren't really radially spoking much back when these wheels were probably built.

b-ride

hey, thanks for the info guys, but one follow up question for you, 11.4: if that rear shimano hub is a track hub, why do the cog and the lockring thread on in the same direction? i've ridden the wheel sparingly and stopped all together once the cog started backing off one day. would the cog/lockring set up be like this because this kind of hub would normally never be used off the drome? i could see how once your race is done, there's no real hurry to slow down- no red lights or anything- so putting all sorts of back pressure on wouldn't be an issue. i'd really love to re-use these hubs and just put the rims up on the wall. well, the front is fine, but it's the back i wonder about. oh well...

b

11.4

The stamps you describe were used to designate the flange design and width. I simply assumed you had a track hub. Do your cog and your lockring have the same internal diameter and threading? If so, what you have is not a true track lockring, but a cog and a BSC threaded bottom bracket lockring (which has the same threading as an old fashioned freewheel hub, which is the same threading as a track cog except that the freewheel hub doesn't have a reverse-threaded lockring thread in a smaller diameter). If what you have is in fact a freewheel hub converted with a track axle, don't write it off yet. Back then road hubs were just converting from 120 to 126 mm (with the change from 5 to 6-speed) so a 120 mm spaced road hub would fit track spacing quite nicely. I personally always use lockrings and ride so as to depend on them, but many track riders dispense with them, and at that point you might as well use a freewheel hub because without a lockring it's all the same anyway. You can pm me with a photo if you want a definitive identification or have concerns about using it on the track.