Another Electronic Shift System Drops

In case anyone had any doubts, electronic shifting is here to stay, if the latest Taipei Cycle Show is any indication. Shimano, Campagnolo, and SRAM all have their own electronic shifting systems -- all of them costing thousands of dollars. And now a low-cost version from Microshift is clearly in the works, with a functioning prototype system on display at the industry show in Taiwan.

Reports are that the system would cost about $600 or less, making it cost-competitive with a lot of "normal" cable-operated shifting systems.

Apparently, one of the challenges with producing another entry to the electronic shifting world is getting around the patents of the leaders -- as virtually every element of the current systems on the market, right down to the wiring, is protected from infringement. The way I understand it, that was one of the reasons that ROTOR components decided to create their hydraulic shifting system, which is just about to launch later this spring.

Microshift, a Taiwanese company, has been making a name for itself with their good-quality-low-price components. In my experience, their current derailleurs function as well as anything from Shimano, and some even have nice buffed or polished silver finishes that look good on older bikes as well as new. I guess it was only a matter of time before they tried to break into the electronic shifting market.

The way I understand it, the Microshift system, called eXCD, uses "standard" batteries -- in this case rechargeable AAs -- and keeps them in the bar-mounted shifter unit. According to visitors to the Microshift booth in Taipei, there are no other battery packs to mount onto the bike. The company says that a charge should be good for about 1000 km, or 6000 shifts.

I don't know if that's good or bad, but I do know that my old cable-operated shifters have virtually no limit of miles or shifts.

The rear derailleur doesn't look any better or worse than other electronic derailleurs I've seen so far, which is another way of saying that it's just as ugly as the rest. The shifter unit, which houses the batteries, brains, and buttons, is a clunky-looking thing, and doesn't look like it would "integrate" with a bike's brake levers the way some other electronic shifting systems do. Then again, it is intended for mountain bikes - not road - and it's still in the prototype stage, so the design could change. Doesn't matter to me, though.

Once the eXCD system hits the market, in another year or so, I suppose that it will only be a matter of time before we'll be seeing more and more e-shift systems at lower and lower prices, and eventually it could be hard to find a bike -- even at the entry-level -- that doesn't have to be plugged in or charged up before riding.

And won't that be something to celebrate?

Quiz: Do You Know Your Lugs?

After failing (miserably) the BikeRadar quiz on "Do You Know Your Mountain Bikes" (believe me, I'll get over it) I decided to create my own quiz on classic road bike bits. Identifying current mountain bikes by their blackened silhouettes just isn't in my repertoire. And as I mentioned previously, putting silhouettes of vintage road bikes up could be even more difficult to identify. For example, can you tell what this bike is by its silhouette?

Hint: It starts with "M" and rhymes with kamikazi.

Classic steel bikes are about details, and while the details can go much deeper than elements like lugs, it seems to me that lugs are a good place to start.

So with that, I present you with a little 10-question quiz.

Try it, and report in the comments on how you did!

Quiz: Do You Know Your Mountain Bikes?

I just took a quiz on BikeRadar - How Well Do You Know Your Mountain Bikes? 

The quiz is set up with pictures of 10 current mountain bikes shown only in silhouette so that no logos or colors are visible. You then have to pick the right bike from about 4 multiple-choice options.

So, how well do I know my mountain bikes? Turns out, not very well at all. I got 2 out of 10, and one of those was just a lucky guess.

Here was the only one that I got right that was more than a simple shot in the dark guess:

Something about the curves in this bike's top-tube told me "Ibis," so I went with that. YEAH!

On the whole, though, they all looked pretty much the same to me. Suspension forks, rear suspension linkages and shock absorbers, extra long seatposts, and weird alien-meets-praying-mantis proportions. It's just not something I can fully appreciate, I guess. That's not to say they aren't great bikes -- they're just not my thing.

No idea what this is.

To be fair, however, if someone were to set up a similar quiz with a bunch of silhouette pictures of classic steel road bikes, I might have to admit there'd probably be even less to distinguish one from another.

For example:

I couldn't tell you the make or model of this bike by its silhouette. I could, however, tell you that it's full Campy (except for that seat-post), and it has some deep-drop Cinelli bars on it (Campione del Mondo?). The top-tube cable clips would hint at something from the '70s, and something about the bike's overall proportions and angles would lead me to guess it's Italian. And all of that info is probably much more than you'd get from somebody who got 10 out of 10 on the mountain bike quiz.

The thing about classic steel bikes is that the differences are in the details -- not what you see from a distance. What kind of lugs are used? Did the builder file and thin them? Are there any cut-outs in the lugs or bottom bracket? Is the brazing clean and free of lumps or gaps? How did the builder handle the seat-stay tops and the seat-lug cluster? How are the tubes finished at the dropout ends? What kind of seat-stay and chain-stay bridges were used? What type of fork-crown does it have? What's the fork rake like? Someone who has even more experience with construction details, or with certain brands and builders, might be able to identify more.

Its for reasons like those that a reasonably well-versed classic-bike fan can often identify the make and model of a bike even if the thing has been stripped of its original parts and Kryloned half to death. It's the minutiae of details that, to me, make a hand-built steel bike so much more interesting.

Now, some builders over the years have made their bikes easier to identify from a distance than others. Hetchins made bikes with "curly" stays that are instantly recognizable. Bates made their "Diadrant" forks with a double-bend in the rake. And there were "Flying Gates" and other unusual models as well -- all of which could be recognized from afar, with or without names or logos. But on the whole, classic steel road bikes are special not because of what you can see from a silhouette, but what you learn to appreciate up close and personal.

Excel & Elgin - American Derailleurs from Beatrice Foods

It's probably not widely known that the U.S. had a bicycle derailleur and component industry in the years shortly after the Great American Bike Boom -- long before the CNC'd boutique parts craze that began in the 1990s. Nor is it likely that many people know that the now-defunct mega corporation Beatrice Foods was behind it.

Beatrice Foods? Their slogan used to be "You've known us all along" because they were the parent company of all kinds of brands and products that were a big part of everyday American life: Peter Pan peanut butter, Butterball turkeys, Hunt's tomato products, Tropicana orange juice, and much, much more. In addition, they also were the parent company of numerous non-food-related companies such as Airstream campers, Samsonite luggage, Avis car rental, and others. In the 1970s, probably due to the bike-boom, they must have decided that bicycle components were a good bet.

According to Frank Berto's bicycle history The Dancing Chain, the Illinois-based Beatrice got started in the bicycle component business in the early '80s, but according to the Disraeli Gears site, it seems that the start may actually have been earlier than that - at least by the mid '70s. Their line of derailleurs and other components bore the name Excel, although the name Elgin also enters into the history.

The Excel Dynamic of the late '70s was a blatant copy of the
Huret Allvit -- but without all the "refinement" the original
was known for. Ha Ha.

There have been a lot of companies and products that carried the Elgin name -- many of them based in Elgin, Illinois: watches, sewing machines, and bicycles, among others. Elgin bicycles were a brand owned by Sears (based in Chicago, you may recall) and sold at least up until WWII. In the 1970s, many Sears Free Spirit-branded 10-speeds were using derailleurs with the Elgin name, and made in the USA. Both Elgin and Excel derailleurs were made in the same Illinois factory, and the same basic derailleurs could apparently be found marketed under either brand name.

Unlike the made-in-the-USA CNC'd derailleurs of the '90s, which were extravagantly expensive creations hewn from colorful anodized aluminum, the Excel and Elgin derailleurs were bottom-of-the-barrel stamped steel copies of verging-on-obsolete French Huret and Simplex units. The Excel Dynamic was a cheap, less-refined clone of the Huret Allvit (except that it was almost impossible to adjust, and had menacing springs poking out dangerously), and the model known as the Elgin American was a copy of the old Simplex Prestige, complete with plastic pivot bodies. There were also front derailleurs that worked somewhat like old Campagnolo Valentino units, but cheaply stamped out of steel and shrouded in plastic. Together, these derailleurs were used on Sears Free Spirits and other American department store bikes in the late '70s. Big surprise there, right?

One can still find parts diagrams of the old Excel derailleurs on Sears Parts Direct. Shockingly, some of the small parts are still in stock. Why would anybody rebuild one of these things when it would be easier to just replace it with a better derailleur?

Here is an early '80s edition of an Excel steel derailleur. It's been prettied up a bit compared to earlier versions, and the plastic pivot bodies have been changed to steel, but it's still basically a Simplex derivative (maybe with a little Shimano Lark thrown in for good measure).

In the early '80s Excel also began importing Italian copies of SunTour derailleurs. Made by Cambio Rino, the rear derailleurs looked remarkably like SunTour Vx and Cyclone models. Called Excel Gruppo Rino, they didn't hide the group's origins. The Rino-made derailleurs are a real curiosity because they are faithful SunTour knockoffs -- including SunTour's patented slant parallelogram, even though that patent wouldn't expire until the end of 1984. It is unclear whether Rino (and by extension, Excel) faced any legal action for violating the patent, or if they paid some kind of licensing fee to SunTour for the rights to use the design. One can search for the answer to that question and find nothing definitive either way. Nevertheless, I've never seen one up close, much less used one, but I have no doubt that they worked just fine. Why wouldn't they? While the imported Rino components made up the company's high end, their American-made French-inspired steel derailleurs continued to be sold as the budget line.

In the early '80s, ultramarathoner Lon Haldeman figured prominently in Excel's advertising. Haldeman was a notable user of the higher-end Excel components in the Race Across America.

In 1983, Excel introduced their Ultimate line, which was also made for them by Rino. The ads proclaim it the "official" component group of the '83 Race Across America. The Ultimate rear derailleur also utilized the SunTour slant parallelogram, but looked less like a faithful copy than a heavily streamlined refinement -- or a derailleur-shaped blob of molten aluminum, depending on your taste.

Also in 1983, Excel introduced the Cambiogear, an expanding chainwheel crank that shifted gears without a derailleur. I wrote about that one back in January. Made of graphite-reinforced plastic, it offered 16 sequential gears with a 3-to-1 range. Unlike the Rino-made derailleurs that made up the company's "high end" products, the Cambiogear was made in the USA. The product was only available for about one year before disappearing. Judging from the advertisements in the bicycle magazines (it seems that they stopped appearing sometime after '83), Excel must have gone under not long after. That was it for American-made derailleurs for the rest of the decade.

The Excel Cambiogear was
an expanding-chainring crank
introduced in 1983.

The '90s brought a resurgence of American bicycle component makers, mostly using CNC technology - like Joe's, Precision Billet, Paul's, White Industries, and others. Most of those companies are still in business today, though few if any of them are making derailleurs anymore. And of course there is now SRAM which has made serious in-roads against Shimano and Campagnolo -- but while that company may be U.S.-based, as far as I know the derailleurs and most other components are made in Taiwan.

I'm not implying that Excel's American-made components were in any way good -- far from it -- but in the '70s and '80s, Excel was about the only game in town for American-made bicycle derailleurs for the burgeoning "10-speed" market. Yes, Schwinn had components with their own name on them, but most of those were made overseas and re-branded. Otherwise, any bicycle parts made in the USA were primarily for kids bikes and heavyweight cruisers. But any discussion of American bicycle components wouldn't be complete without including Excel.

ENVE Carbon Fork Recall

If you're a regular Retrogrouch reader, it's unlikely that this would apply to you, but there is another carbon fork recall in the works. Recently, ENVE and the CPSC announced a voluntary recall of the ENVE Road 2.0 disc brake fork. Apparently the forks, which are made in Vietnam, have the potential to break just above the disc brake mount. So far, they've had a handful of failures of the forks, though there are no reports of injuries at this time.

According to the CPSC, the affected forks have 1.25" tapered steerer tubes and were sold for about $540 between June 2014 and December 2015. Owners should check the serial numbers marked on the steerer tube. Affected forks have serial numbers beginning with VCT1406, VCT1410, VCT1411, VCT1501, VCT1503, VCT1505, VCT1506, VCT1507, VCT1508, VCT1509, and VCT1510.

If you, or someone you know has a bike with one of the forks, CPSC says they "should immediately stop using the recalled forks" and contact ENVE for a full refund or a substitute model (recall form HERE).

Many things about this recall say that it's unlikely that any retrogrouches would be affected. "Carbon Fork," "Disc Brake," "Tapered Steerer," and "$540." But you might have a friend who won't (or shouldn't) be riding until they get this thing sorted out. If that's the case, please be nice and let them borrow a solid, reliable steel bike until they can get their new forks from ENVE.

Of course, there's always the risk that they won't want to give your bike back.

Is There a 39er in Your Future?

Ever get to thinking we need more tire/wheel sizes? I mean, between 700c/29er, 650b/27.5, and 26-in., not to mention plus-size and fatties, it seems that there just aren't enough choices. What's a die-hard equipment junkie to do?

(All photos from Patrick Ng's Behance page)

Enter the Ridiculous XC Interpolate 39er, from the same people that introduced us to the Roost Carbon. That hypothetical, satirical mountain bike defied all current bike industry standards with its 188 mm rear dropout spacing, 28-in. wheels (situated between 29er and 27.5), and 11 - 53 tooth 13-speed cassette.

Ridiculous Bikes is back at it again with another standards-defying XC bike, computer rendered by Patrick Ng. With its 39-in wheels, the bike is completely nuts, but has some unusual design features to make such stupidly large wheels at least theoretically workable. And there's probably no terrain that those wheels wouldn't just swallow up.

The Interpolate's 39-inch wheels dwarf the 29er - but the the overall riding position is claimed to be similar. On the other hand, it has an unwieldy 1487 mm wheelbase (around 58 inches), and I'm thinking the overall length would be around 8 feet.

One of the more unusual features is the bike's geared steering system. The front fork is positioned far out in front to keep the huge front wheel from clipping the pedals or downtube. The handlebars are positioned closer in toward the rider and connected to the fork using sprockets and a chain.

The geared connection between the bars and the front fork help make the bike seem workable - and the designer points out that different sized sprockets could be swapped in or out to alter the bike's steering characteristics.

Ng's computer rendering skills are pretty damned good - good enough to probably fool more than a few people that the 39er is real. Right now, somewhere in America, a bike shop sales manager is trying to explain to a customer that he can't actually buy a 39er XC bike. And somewhere else, in a major bike company's marketing department, someone else is asking "why not"?

Ridiculous or not - don't rule it out.

The Passing of Brian Baylis

"I make a bike that pleases my eye and satisfies my soul. Even though my extra effort is not always rewarded monetarily, my 'payment' for this is self-satisfaction. When the finished product makes the client happy, and if some appreciate my skill and effort, then I feel complete. Builders who refuse to put in the effort, much of which involves lots of time, without financial considerations, are simply not driven as craftsmen in the purest sense. These people are in the 'business' of framebuilding." 

-- R. Brian Baylis

Some of Brian Baylis's exquisite craftsmanship.
(photo from Jan Heine's Bicycle Quarterly, with permission)

Brian Baylis passed away Saturday evening due to severe complications from pneumonia. He was widely considered one of the greats of American bicycle frame building, and even though a person might go their whole life without ever seeing one of his bikes up close, touching it, or riding it, his death is a real loss to the world of bicyclists and builders, artists and craftsmen.

Brian really was an artist and a craftsman in a very pure sense. He didn't make a huge number of bicycle frames, and that could be at least in part because he spent an inordinate amount of time striving for perfection in the details of each of the bikes he built. Fellow framebuilder Dave Moulton very recently wrote of Brian's attention to detail and workmanship:

"On hearing of his passing, for some reason I thought of a story I once heard of an old wood carver, working on a huge pair of double oak doors. The design was an intricate one with oak leaves and acorns, scrolls and winged cherubs in each corner. Someone asked him, 'How do you know when it is finished?' He replied, 'It is never finished, they just come and take it away from me'."

Brian was probably as well-known as a painter as he was as a builder. He painted bikes for a number of other builders over the years, and also did a lot of paint and restoration work on vintage bicycles. That was how I came to know, in a very small way, Brian Baylis. I had an old 1970 Raleigh Professional that was absolutely beat and battered, but the bike was part of a "limited edition" with a special numbered label, and I thought it might be worth restoring. Considering the bike's condition, I probably over-paid, and then I spent more restoring the bike than the bike was likely worth. Financially it was not such a smart move, but I was younger, more naive, and didn't yet have kids. And it got me in touch with Brian, so no regrets.


I sent the bike frame and fork to him in California, and then we spent some time talking on the phone about it. We had a few conversations like that. He was exceptionally cool to talk with on the phone, and I felt good about how the project would turn out. That bike frame needed a lot of work. It had a shallow dent in the top tube, a fair amount of rust (some of which went fairly deep), pitted chrome, and it had an adjuster screw broken off in the rear dropout. It took several months to get the bike back, which I've heard is actually pretty good turnaround time. When it came back, it was absolutely beautiful -- in fact, it was doubtless much nicer than it was when it first left Raleigh's Carlton factory in Worksop. The chrome gleamed. The tubes were straight and true. The paint, with its contrast panels, bands, and pinstriping, was flawless. Looking closely at the head-tube on the bike, I noticed that Brian even restored the headbadge. He had polished the brass and re-painted the little details in the recesses. He never mentioned it in our conversations, and it didn't show up on the final bill. I think it was just part of that attention to detail I'd heard so much about that he couldn't bring himself to put the dull and faded badge on that gorgeously restored frame.


Nearly a decade later, at a Cirque du Cyclisme show in North Carolina, I met Brian in person for the first time. I was mildly surprised, but he remembered me and my old Raleigh very well, and we had another nice conversation. He just struck me as a truly genuine guy, and I really wished I could spend more time, maybe on his own turf, in his workshop, sharing some beers and swapping some stories.

I kept that bike for a while, but some years later I ended up selling it to pay for a new-old-stock, never-ridden 1973 Mercian Superlight. But that old Raleigh was the closest I ever had to owning some Baylis craftsmanship.

A Little History - For Those Who Just Don't Know:

Brian Baylis got his start in the bicycle business back in 1973 when he got a job with the recently-opened Masi factory in California. He started out with tasks such as building wheels and doing bike assembly, then eventually filing, brazing, and later painting. After a few years, he and fellow Masi builder Mike Howard struck out on their own to form Wizard Bicycles. Another couple of years and about 80 frames later, both men were called back to help re-organize Masi. Then there was a brief flirtation with Medici which was itself sort of a Masi spinoff, then Brian went out to build, paint, and restore frames under his own name.

In more recent years, Brian was focusing on some other interests besides bicycles. I could have it wrong, but based on things I'd heard and read (some of it from Brian himself) it seemed to me that his work on bicycles was becoming more and more something he was doing for good friends and maybe to fulfill older obligations, and he was working quite hard at making really exquisite hand-made knives. His familiar attention to detail and craftsmanship was just as much a part of his knives as it was on his bicycles.

Brian with one of his bikes at NAHBS in '07
(photo by Jessica Lifland)

There are a lot of people out there who knew him a helluva lot better than I ever could have - people who can speak of the man's many passions. Bicycles. Drums. Dogs. He was even restoring a classic Bentley. I am glad to have even had the bit of interaction with Brian that I did. There are several other tributes to Brian going up around the web already - like the one by Dave Moulton that I mentioned earlier. One could also check Brian's own blog for some info and pictures of his work, or the Classic Rendezvous page about him.

I figure the best way to wrap up this little tribute would be the same way it started, with Brian's own words:

"Growing as an artist and craftsman never ends. Challenging oneself is what makes you grow and expand. Falling into a routine and doing the same thing over and over again doesn't satisfy me. This may work for many others, but results in being good at one thing. I prefer working on a broader set of skills and perfecting them, which keeps framebuilding fresh and exciting. I get my inspiration from this."

"Talk is cheap. The work must speak for itself. Simple as that."