Originally Posted by stronglight

Well, Not just the Italians... Weinmann was "stubbornly" Swiss. The seemed determined to come up with their own unique solutions - in spite of what other companies (ie: Campagnolo) had already perfected. In their "605" calipers from the late '70s the made their first attempt at a QR for their sidepulls - here's an example of them:

http://cgi.ebay.com/NOS-WEINMANN-605...QQcmdZViewItem

Although this was nearly a decade after Campy's flawlessly designed brakes, Weinmann tried to build their own "better mousetrap". What they came up with on these (not real clear in the photos) was a steel cage clamped around the "upper" caliper arm which, when released, dropped the threaded cable adjuster AND the threaded sleeve which it hung inside. Worked fine, but why do it this way? ~ Otherwise, these are great calipers. Note those clever, smooth operating, white nylon bushings. These fitted inside the bores for the center pivot bolts - and simultaneously isolated the caliper arms from each other, minimizing any friction between them, as well.


They eventually just made fine quality copies of the Campy calipers which they called the "Carrera" model... But, not until the '80s did they re-locate the QR on those to the customary lower caliper arm!

[As you can tell, I'm fascinated with the evolution of all the bike technology which we take for granted today.]