Originally Posted by
T-Mar
Regarding the anodizing, Dia-Compe did offer a bronze colour. These may not have faded. It's easy enough to tell by examining areas where the sun don't shine. For instance, you can remove the pads and examine the surfaces where the pad carriers mate with the calipers.
T-Mar, you're right. Never saw any catalog listings for these but they were apparently made special for the Centurion Turbo.
Why they didn't just go with black anodized components? Only the Japanese could answer those aesthetics questions. (Think "Fair Lady Blue Bird" the model name for the Datsun Z mini muscle cars in Japan)
The Gran Compe NGC400 brakes were also sold as Suntour Cyclone branded. NGC stood for New Grand Compe and 400 indicated Short Reach - 40mm to 50mm. I have several sets of these calipers that are unbranded. They're very well made.
Originally Posted by
T-Mar
Personally, I think people get too carried away with Tange
#1 . Tange
#1 through
#5 all used the same fork steerer, fork blades, seat stays and chain stays. So, the only difference was in the main triangle and even then
#1 through
#3 used the same seat tube, so for the commonly seen
#1 and
#2 framesets, the only difference were the top and down down tubes.
Standard Tange # 1 had .8mm x .5mm x .8mm top and down tubes with a .9mm x .6mm x .9mm seat tube. The 3 main tubes in Tange # 2 were all .9mm x .6mm x .9mm wall thickness.
The double butted seat tubes used in both # 1 & # 2 required smaller diameter seatposts that those used with single butted .8mm x .5mm or .9mm x .6mm seat tubes.
Originally Posted by
T-Mar
However, WSI did not spec standard tubesets for their Tange
#1 frames. Centurion Ironman, Comp TA and Turbo owners regularly report 27.0 - 27.2mm seat posts, which would be far too large for the standard double butted seat tube used with Tange
#1 . The post sizes suggest a custom, single butted version of the seat tube or possibly the standard Tange
#4 seat tube, which was single butted 0.9mm/0.7mm.
I had to cut the seatpost out of my 1987 IM when I got it. The bike had been used for triathlons, ridden hard and put away wet so the seat tube was severely corroded.
STUPID DESIGN... using a deeply fluted seatpost on a triathlon bike!
When I started reaming out the seat tube to clean up the corrosion I had to remove a lot of clean metal to get to what I thought was the correct size 27.2mm seatpost to fit. I didn't realize at the time that the seat tube was double butted and had a wall thickness of .9mm at the top.
BTW, I also had a nice almost NOS 1986 IM frame that I sold off. The seat tube cleaned up nicely with a little bit of honing and a 27.2mm seatpost fit in smoothly. The exception to the rule...
The IM bikes were definitely not in the same league as the Turbos but they offered a whole lotta bang for the buck.
verktyg
