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Post by oldroadietehachapi on Jul 28, 2015 18:03:48 GMT
As a novelty, I bought a couple of death forks (I don't plan to use them; well maybe if we had a death ride in California). One is an early version, with a 215mm steerer and weighs an astonishing 1 pound, 13 ounces! The second is the third version (with the steel steerer threaded down into the fork crown). It has a 190mm steerer and weighs an even more astonishing 2 pounds, 1 ounce! That equals the heaviest fork I have weighed, which was high tensile steel with a 300mm steerer. I have weighed 4 Columbus SL forks from various projects and they weighed 1 pound, 6 or 7 ounces. The Specialized Allez aluminum fork that I will use in my Viscount build weighs 1 pound, 3 ounces. Attached please find an image of my fork weight data.
Jim
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Post by velocipete on Jul 28, 2015 20:52:37 GMT
AT those weghts I think I'll leave my alloy cyclocross fork in my Sport.I also like to be able to stop!
I'll leave my spare death fork,Mk3,in the garage.
Cheers,
Pete.
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bendo
Viscount
Posts: 538 
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Post by bendo on Jul 29, 2015 3:59:56 GMT
That's interesting data Jim, thanks for sharing. I remember when I got my first Death Fork and compared it to a steel one I was surprised that they felt about the same. Then I compared to a friend's ALAN fork which was hollow aluminium and the difference of course was massive.
For me the reason for running a Death Fork is historical, and also it allows me to run DA sidepulls because the clearance is much less than with a 27" steel fork.
b
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Post by cusqueno on Jul 29, 2015 11:02:08 GMT
One of the stories about Lambert / Viscount bikes that goes around is that the ‘special’ components were designed, not by bike experts but by people from the UK aviation industry. The story goes that the industry was contracting, following the cancellation of the TSR2 bomber &c, and engineers turned their hands to other projects, such as designing bike components.
I have no way of deciding the truth behind this (if any) - perhaps Busaste knows? But it might explain why the forks were over-engineered and therefore heavy, in the days before finite element analysis and before computers smaller than a warehouse, could come to their aid. It wouldn’t explain the neglect of the basic knowledge of stress concentrators and fatigue evinced in the early bottom bracket spindle and steerer/fork join designs. They should have known about that from the design failings in the Comet I airliner.
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bendo
Viscount
Posts: 538
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Post by bendo on Jul 29, 2015 23:03:49 GMT
That's a nice, and likely-sounding, narrative. We need Busaste to write his book! They got the fork wrong but they got the frame very right! Amazing that they are still lighter than most Columbus SL and 531 frames, and that's without double-butting. b
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Post by oldroadietehachapi on Jul 30, 2015 5:34:32 GMT
I am enjoying the replies. It is surprising that they got the frame so light and the fork so heavy (as well as failure prone). It makes one wonder what might have been if they had gotten the fork as right as the frame.
Jim
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