Elegant dropouts
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p> I’ve heard and read that these dropouts are elegant, but there really is a worrisome lack of mass at the oh-so crucial junction between axle and right chainstay. This is of course a classic place for a steel bike to fatigue fail. Maybe not today or even next year but…
I’d like to see dropouts that were assymmetrical…the right dropout would have additional material between the axle and chainstay compared to the left. I can’t recall any left dropout on a steel bike that failed from fatigue.
And what the hell is “Speedvagen” anyways? It ain’t German, that’s for sure. Why spell it with a “v”? “Volkswagen” is actually pronounced “folks-vah-gen”, meaning people’s car. Are we supposed to pronounce it “Spayd-fag-en”? Ugh, it burns my eyes to see it in print, like when people spell “seniora” with a ~.
“Der Wagen” means car auf Deutsch, whereas “das Fahrrad” is a bicycle. The slang for bicycle is “Rad”, though that technically means wheel. “Speed Wagon” was an early American example of a lorry or pickup truck, and “Speedwagon” was a cheesy (not in a good way) ’80s band.