Have been thinking a lot about this as I get some classic bikes back on the road, including the 1974 Jack Taylor that I recently wrote about (
http://www.bikeforums.net/classic-vi...r-britain.html). I like to use period-correct components if I can. To eke out best performance, or push the gearing as far as possible, or minimize weight, or stay true to a particular country or era I have found the following to be particularly useful:
1) For great historical overview, decade-by-decade summaries of sales and trends, and tons of pictures of components: "The Dancing Chain" by Frank Berto.
2) For fabulous technical summaries of most parts of bikes from 1970s and 1980s: "Upgrading your Bike" by Frank Berto. This was written just at the transition from classic Campagnolo/Simplex/Suntour - 5/6 speed friction shifting bikes with toe clip pedals to the Shimano-dominated era of indexed shifting bikes with clipless pedals. As a result, the book has excellent coverage of both the 70's and 80's, with tons of tables summarizing features, dimensions, and functional tests of both older and newer components.
3) A well-written, efficient, and sometimes acerbic and entertaining series of equipment articles from mid 70s by Joe Kossack, former technical editor of Bike World magazine. The 70 pages or so of Kossak articles are packaged together in an inexpensive reprint with a series on frame building articles by Tom Ritchey, Richard Sachs, Colin Laing and others. Outstanding collection and well worth the $14 cost from
Velo-Retro: Vintage Catalog Reprints.
4) Good book on maintenance and repair of bike parts, written at a time when most examples and photos come from C&V era: "Glenn's New Complete Bike Manual."
5) A classic from the early 70's bike boom era. "The New Complete Book of Bicycling" by Eugene Sloane. Sloane's 500 page tome was the most complete book available when 10 speed bike sales exploded between 1970 and 1974. Available in multiple editions, but the I like the 1974 version that came out when bikes were everything to us in junior high and high school (see picture below).
6) Finally, a mid-70's shop catalog that deserves mention because of its abundant photos, comparisons, comments, and uniform listing of both weights and prices of components from the era. Pages are available as a catalog scan on-line.
Palo Alto Bicycles 1976. Take a look at this page as one example of the useful information collected in the catalog:
p30.jpg.
The most used items in my C&V reference library:
