Bike porn

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YES

That Serotta is a massive win!

i think thats not the correct fork for the frame.... there is something with the front brake

Wound ups (?)

Front end makes it IMO

Wound ups (?)

But with the brake bosses in the wrong place. Look at the leverage ratio of the front brake compared with the rear. If you were going to do that deliberately, it would be the other way around.

Can you get wound up CX forks with brakes bosses higher up/adjustable. On the webz they all seem to be same kind of height?

I've had some dialogue with them with regards to some mild customisation - they were totally unwilling to entertain the idea, said if it wasn't on the price list it wasn't coming from them.

Which was a bit disappointing, if I'm honest.

I have an old Colnago Super and went with wound up fork.
The original fork has a 50 mm rake. Wound up was able to build
me a fork with 50 mm rake. That may not have been an unusual
request for them, I've seen tandem forks with that rake.

prewar, octagonal, lugged, aluminium

Bishop

Just to toss in a full pic.

Interesting: if they could do that pre-war I wonder why there wasn't a boom post-war, what with so many more skilled metalworkers familiar with aluminium.

I wonder why there wasn't a boom post-war

Spitfires only had to last a few months at most, before being destroyed or superseded. A bike ridden in all weathers would quickly expose the problems of electrolytic corrosion in aluminium lugs bolted together with steel fasteners, stress corrosion cracking where the lug/tube interface would probably be permanently wet thanks to the thin film of water which would lie in the gap, fretting at the interface caused by small movements which would be inevitable on such a clamped joint etc.

That's before you even get into the question of whether it was actually any better than a brazed assembly of 531 tubes, a skill set which was also in plentiful supply given that a great many engine bearers were of such construction regardless of the material used for the bulk of the airframe.

Why the comeback in the Nineties?

That's before you even get into the question of whether it was actually any better than a brazed assembly of 531 tubes...

Given the obsession with weight, I still find it curious that it took forty-odd years for it to reappear.

Even on a kitchen-sink scale, you'd have thought the Mike Burrows of the day would have turned something out.

Why the comeback in the Nineties?

Because reliable glue became available, and stronger aluminium alloys. Bonded frames like Alan and Vitus solve all the problems I listed above (even if they introduce new ones of their own). Even they were only moderately successful at a fairly high price, it took the introduction of alloys which could achieve full strength with post-weld heat treatment to make aluminium frames mainstream.

Maybe Ciclibarco can help you.
http://www.ciclibarco.it/?portfolio=viva-fork

Furry muff.

Even so, considering the weight advantage of aluminium over steel (and the pool of reckless talent) it's still surprising to me that there weren't any "ally" bikes in the Fifties and Sixties.

Claimed weight appears to be 12 1/4 lbs.

...with a single brake, but still.

...with a single brake, but still.

Picture says "fixed wheel", so legs are back brake? No foot retention in the picture though.

What I was getting at was that the catalogue spec looks fairly similar to the one in the photo, so weight could be comparable.

i was under the impression the difference between Alan and Vitus is that Alans are threaded tubes pasted with bond and screwed in
vitus just bonded tubes into lugs
i learnt this through the CIA, google

Weight advantage is relative anyway. Cut two comparable bikes apart today, one aluminium and one steel and see the wall thickness disparity.

"hello I'm buzz killington, would you like to look at some etchings?"

;-)