Originally Posted by
cudak888
Well, this is what ticked me off this afternoon and basically lead to my rant:
I thought I was to have a rear yolk to mount on my Paramount this afternoon - until I saw those rechromed bolts. Ridiculous!
This is primarily what my rant is directed at - rechroming small sundries like this that were never meant to be chromed. They were
meant to be zinc - they look absolutely foolish chromed. After all, the Weinmann yolks are the ugliest, crappiest pieces of stamped $hit in the first place, there is no reason to make that bolt look nice.
-Kurt
Weinmann bolts were chrome, just not much done after machining and not very thick, the early 60's nuts were also chrome, later the nut was zinc as was the washer. Mom's '64 Carlton has the chrome, but the scratches in the steel base are visible.
This brings up the whole subject of finish level, paint is another good example, its hard to get a professional painter to paint a bike as slap dash as most were originally, And I am not thinking about the buried in clear decals seen in the 80's later. Its kind of hard for a painter to downshift their quality to match the original. Many bikes are recreations of a fond memory of long ago, so the subtle push to make that memory as perfect as possible.
This is why I like Campagnolo, they had the superior finish at the onset.