Their product line has expanded
again to include clothing, shoes, pedals and helmets, but there was a time when
Mavic made all types of components. The company introduced a “tout Mavic”
concept in 1979, in which a frame could be built up completely with brand
components: brakes, levers, crankset, pedals, derailleurs, shifters, as well as
bottom bracket, headset, seatpost, stem, bars, and of course, their legendary
wheelsets. The wonderful aspect about Mavic components is that they could all
be completely disassembled, and small parts could be replaced.
During the late 1980s-early ‘90s,
when the battle between Shimano and Campagnolo really stepped up, many
respectable component companies such as Simplex, Sachs and SunTour disappeared.
On the heels of brilliant ideas gone wrong, first with the electronic shifting
system called “Zap”, then a completely wireless system known as “Mektronic”,
Mavic's design team decided to take a step back and focus on wheels only.
The original mechanical Mavic parts are still wonderfully
reliable products, and cyclists like me with a vintage preference just don’t
let them go easily. Those components are getting harder and harder to find and,
of course, are becoming more expensive when you do find them.
I was excited to see the
wonderful condition of the Mavic group purchased for the Vitus 979 I’m putting
together. A few of the parts seem to have not even been used, or at least were
very well-cared-for. My friend Brendan recently expressed an interest in changing
the Super Record group to Mavic on the Sean Kelly KAS replica I built for him a
couple of years ago, so a few of the parts I won’t be using for Arol's build have already been
claimed.
An interesting inclusion in the
group was a set of Sachs 8-speed combination shifter/brake levers (photo above)
that are almost exact copies of the original Campagnolo Ergo levers. Without
the Sachs logo on the handle and the embossed hoods, one really wouldn’t be able
to tell the difference. Arol’s preference for French parts will push these
levers out of the picture, so I’m attempting to find Mavic 820 downtube levers (below) or perhaps the
Simplex SLJ versions, which Mavic had copied. I eventually did a similar substitution on my own Vitus 992.
Mentioned last week, we had
decided to go the copycat route (compare the two brands below) with the Dia-Compe BRS 550 brake
levers, and I was quite happy to find the logos could be removed easily with some fine
steel wool. In fact, the black printing came off with such little effort, I can’t
imagine it would have stood up very long to the constant use by sweaty
fingers.
By the way, the bars that were included with
the Mavic group had horrendous purple and teal splash bar tape wrapped around
them. Now, I know you’ve heard me rant about this junk before, but if you have
a nice bike and have this abomination to cycling on it, go out RIGHT NOW and
change it! Something that matches the color of the paint or the logos, or maybe
a contrasting color...ANYTHING will look better, believe me.
Really, you have an expensive, flashy machine
or (cycle-gods forbid) a vintage ride, and you want to accent it with “clown
vomit” bar tape (to paraphrase my son Carrick). It’s like topping off the best
filet mignon with ketchup – and Acme store brand, not even Heinz!
There are many respectable companies that
put out nice bar tape products, and the ones that manufacture trash like this
are not included among them. If you are looking at any of the photos below and
are saying to yourself, “Now what’s so bad about that?”, I bet you are a person who sees a Monet painting or a
Bernini sculpture and think, “What’s the big deal with him?”
Anyway, during my bi-weekly eBay searches,
I’ve seen a few excellent bicycles with head-shaking handlebar
decisions. I thought I’d sign off by sharing a few examples:
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