Things to do with a Viscount Death Fork™
 

Upon yooze's* urging, last year, I replaced the so-called Death Fork™ on my Viscount. Here is the bike with the spiffy replacement fork.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...dab3cf7529.jpg


Are there any creative things I could do with the old fork? The steerer is steel, and the fork blades are cast aluminum. The Viscount frame is quite light for its vintage because of the use of thin-walled chrome-moly tubing. I guess they wanted to show off their use of lightweight materials so they made the fork of aluminum. Ooh, fancy, but it's the same weight as a steel fork. :lol: And the importer issued a recall because there was a chance the steerer tube would snap off. I have not read of any anecdotes of this happening, much less anyone dying, though death is a worthy topic because it's conceivable that someone could die if a fork detaches from a bike in high speed motion.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...f689e1833d.jpg

Since taking this picture, I removed the crown race and the wiring. I had used the wiring for a headlight.

*That's New York-ese for y'all's.

Table lamp?

I'm with bill on this one; cut the legs off and use the steerer to be the base. Smiles, MH

The company that manufactured the Lambert bikes (as Viscounts were called before that company went bankrupt and the assets were acquired by the Trusty Mfg. Co.) made a number of cast aluminum components for the bikes in house, including the brake calipers, hubs, pedals, and cranksets.

They clearly weren't trying to build a fork that weighed less a steel fork. The motivation would have been that it was much cheaper for them to cast a fork and pin a steel tube to it than to buy steel forks from a supplier.

They went through three versions of the pinned fork in an effort to improve its safety. The Yamaha Corp. was the last owner of Lambert/Viscount. They dropped the aluminum fork in favor of a steel one. Last I knew, you could still obtain a steel replacement fork for a Lambert or Viscount bike by contacting Yamaha.

And yes, those forks were unreliable. I was watching a friend test riding a Lambert out in front of our shop in New Haven in 1974 and saw the fork break and pitch him to the ground. He was unhurt, thankfully.

You can read up on the bikes on the Lambert and Viscount Blog.

Repurpose it on eBay and cash in!

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...da4ef26e5b.jpg

That is a stupidly insane asking price.

Another vote for lamp. I have a fork from an old Hercules built Western Auto bike like was used on many a Raleigh in the day. The bike has so many problems and I have so many irons in the fire I will never make it roadworthy in my lifetime. I will likely make a lamp for my den with that fork one day.

It’s been done:

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...d497b8398.jpeg

Use two old threaded headset races and attach it upside down on a board to hold front wheels while in transit.
Similar to this:

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...44bbc8073.jpeg

Mount it on a board and paint the message "When you get to a fork in the road, take it".

Or just mount it on a board, and leave the message to someone else to conjure up.

I'm glad to hear that you replaced the fork Neil. I have the same bike that I picked up used with the replacement Tange fork already installed. It is a delight to ride. No worries. It gets ridden a lot.


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...d26ba5f24d.png

It was fellow BikeForum member Ben also known as 79pmooney that experienced the fork breaking at the steerer tube junction and was in a coma for some time. Some people think this is a myth or urban legend. It is not. The best thing that you can do is replace the fork and then enjoy the bike.

Link here: https://www.bikeforums.net/21602411-post2.html] https://www.bikeforums.net/21602411-post2.html to one of his comments about this incident.

The frame was made by Viking in England.

Kudos to Yamaha for doing the right thing.

Truing stand.

I can think of a couple people that I'd like to have use it. :thumb:

Haven't there been front dropouts made into bottle openers? You could make two long-handled one for particularly tough bottles... at least until the aluminum wears.

Do I remember a toilet paper holder made from a fork and QR?

Well, I do! :)

What I've heard is that the aluminum fork was used to simplify manufacturing. A mold was made from a steel fork and used to create the cast blades/crown assembly. Attaching the steel steer tube is a relatively trivial operation compared to making a complete fork from separate components. As to "why not just use a pre-built fork," I've heard that Tube Investments (parent company to Reynolds, Raleigh, and Sturmey-Archer) took offense at Viscount's aggressive push into the North American market and pressured other suppliers to boycott Viscount (hence the lugless frames, self-produced components, non-brand-name tubing, etc.).

Looks like you'd have to bend the fork legs a bit to work as a TP holder. Not sure how well that'd go with a solid aluminum fork.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a6/bd...112fae76a8.jpg

Well the tubing used for Viscount and some Lamberts was not "no-name", it just wasn't any name known outside of the UK "aerospace industry' namely "Phoenix"

Here's what one expert on these marques had to say about the tubing:
"The tubing was from the UK steel firm Phoenix. It is straight gauge -ie not butted - 1027 chromium molybdenum steel. Similar to Reynolds 501. Some consider that the quality is better than Reynolds tubing"
Some further contend the tubing was seamed, other's that it was seamless...the parent company was eventually absorbed into another larger firm that supplied airframe tubing...not sure how much of that manufacturing still takes place in the UK (?)

One obvious answer to the question of what to do with a Death Fork: cut the ALU off the steel steerer and recycle it!
Clean ALU is one of the few things metal recyclers will pay good money for and good chance it will be used again (maybe some more beer cans?)

Yes:
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...fa77f84f75.jpg
My understanding is that it is seamless, straight-guage chrome-moly tubing.

Reynolds 501 was seamed, butted chrome-moly, cold-drawn through dies to eliminate the weld seam. The result is indistinguishable both visually and functionally from seamless tubing, but less costly to manufacture.

This makes perfect sense. The machine building company that i worked for had a similar situation with another machine building company in the same business. We ended up designing our own heating unit to get around their attempts to strangle us. Similar situation. Same tactic. But you do what you can to survive.

Thanks for pinpointing the frame material unworthy1 . This makes all makes sense.

Lambert/Viscount went so far as to even make their own derailleurs. Fortunately, buyers at that time, were willing swap components.

Cranks/bottom brackets, hubs, handlebars, stems, brakes, seatposts, pedals, and derailleurs/shift levers were all self-produced by Lambert/Viscount. Quality was variable, and not always compatible with industry standards. The rear derailleur in particular was found to have infringed on SunTour's patented "slant pantograph" and may have contributed to Lambert's demise.

Here's some info from the original '72 Lambert Grand Prix on the aircraft tubing. Sorry I didn't make a better photo (or 2 photos) to better read the info on this tubing. It's in storage now so not readily available......but I'm gonna get to it someday. And I'll let my death fork go for ½ of that $550 :p

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...140280dba6.jpg

Wow, I thought I knew most of the important things to do know about these bikes and their history, but I just learned a lot more. Thank you everyone.

As luck has it, I was at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) last night and saw an amazing exhibit of Marcel Duchamp. He used bicycles a bit in his art as you can see here. I wonder if he inspired this technique for everyone else who uses it. I think I learned he may have been the first to put a mustache and goatee on Mona Lisa.


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...0f5b983473.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...c5dec951e2.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...92dfff5799.jpg

Learning about how big companies put undue pressure on small companies makes me angry. They are already doing better than the small ones. They are not content to "win" on merit, they also have to injure others on the way. It's the same story these days only much worse.

Long ago, I bought a NOS set of tubular wheels off a Viscount. They were my introduction to riding tubular tires. The wheels had sealed bearing hubs whose shells were styled like Campagnolo Record. The workmanship quality was really pretty low but they worked fine. Later I saw the other stuff such as the pedals which were not serviceable and rattled endlessly. The brakes are also not amazing, either, but all this stuff actually works well enough. I have one of the brake calipers on my Viscount, and I can't want better performance.

I just looked up those derailleurs on disraeligears. Yeah, they look lousy, especially with the explanation on those pages. What did they use for front derailleurs in those days?