Bonded AL - Who Is Who?
As has already been contributed, quite a few companies and individuals had built aluminium bonded frames by the early 80s, but it took the combination of the Italian company ALAN and the French company VITUS..to promote them, in large series, to a wider public.
The principle difference in construction of these two large scale manufacturers is that ALAN used tubes bonded and screwed into external lugs..that look like lugs, and VITUS used lugs bonded internally into the tubes ie there was no apparent lug..just a joint between the tubes and the cast aluminium joints.
ALAN frames appeared earlier than the VITUS 979 - this one making its public appearance at the Salon de Deux Roues in Paris in September 1979 - hence 979. The later VITUS top level frame the 992, appeared in September 1992, as an attempt to produce a high performace frame to compete with the bonded carbon ones, such as the TVTs and LOOKs that were appearing on the scene.
However other smaller French manufacturers had made bonded alloy frames before Vitus and possibly before Alan, firms such as DURAVIA and CMP..both based in the Lyon area. Certainly the Duravia looked very much like an Alan..or vice-versa ! In the mid-70s Vitus had a project underway to produce a bonded frame, in the first instance using their steel tubes bonded into steel lugs, following a series of frames made by a St Etienne-based builder called MIOSOTIS. Then VITUS teamed up with him to produce a frame using steel external lugs with aluminium tubes bonded into them..this tended to look a little like an ALAN. A variation on this frame made in about 1976/77 had aluminium tubes bonded into large aluminiun lugs..a bit like an ALAN
Finally VITUS went the whole hog and teamed up with MIOSOTIS, another St Etienne builder called Roger Roche and finally with France's largest producer of aluminium tubes, Pechiney, to develop a bonded aluminium-tubed frame. An off-shoot of Vitus, a firm called BADOR joined the group along with Agenieux-CLB, the brake maker, who manufactured all the cast lugs. The end result was the 979.
At first Vitus, a maker of steel tubes, not frames, intended to sell the 979 as a kit of tubes and lugs for other builders to bond together, but such was the response to the first frames exhibited that the firm decided to set up a frame building unit within Vitus to build the frames in-house. TVT, a specialist manufacturer of tubes in carbon and glass-fibre was never ever involved with the Vitus 979 project ; their first frame was not produced until a couple of years later when they had observed the first of the carbon-fibre-tubed Vitus 979s on the market. I imported the first three TVT frames into the UK in 1981
Duralinox - the name of the Pechiney tubing - frames were available in standard colours of silver, red, deep blue, purple, and black. The champagne colour was unique to Peugeot, the pink/rose to Mercier, a deep gold to KAS, an emerald green also to some team, and the light blue to Kelly's SEM-France-Loire team. A white epoxy-coated one was also produced as a special.
To cash in on the success of the bonded frames VITUS then produced the 797 and the Futural models..two lower quality models, but which were also available as cyclo-cross frames. Peugeot wanted exclusivity of the 979 but didn't get it. Later they produced their own Pechiney-tubed frame called the Comete..a mid-priced model.
I used to import Vitus Duralinox direct from Vitus and have never known a frame to fail disastrously ie without warning. In the event of a failure..or decollage - a bonded joint working loose - there would be advance warning as the frame tended to creek. VITUS also bonded carbon-tubed frames and some failures/debondings were noted in these models. However the internal spigots or stubs which entered and were bonded inside the tubes were quite long, preventing any chance of the frame collapsing whilst at the same time providing quite a large bonding area for the epoxy adhesive. One weak point common to many of the aluminium and carbon frames of that era was the lack of a detachable and, therefore, easily replaceable rear gear hanger. The hangers were integral to the rear drop-outs. In the event of a breakage or the thread wearing out, the whole drop-out had to be replaced.
ALTEC were produced by a smaller company in Villeurbanne near Lyon. At first glance they looked much like Duralinox frames but on closer inspection they were more refined in that the ends of the tubes were profiled to give a splined appearance, and the seat-stay tops were more elegant - a type of wrap-over. The Spanish team BH used them both in aluminium-tubed and carbon-tubed versions for a couple of years.
VITUS introduced the avant-garde looking 992 to try to keep some of the burgeoning market for bonded frames. By ovalising the ends of some tubes they both gave the frame a more streamlined appearance while at the same time increasing the bond area in an attempt to eliminate any creeking and debonding. At the height of the 979 sales period Vitus employed 196 staff..but this number reduced dramatically when carbon composites and TIG-welded aluminium frames became popular., At one stage in the company's later life the firm waas bought by TIME. Now the name is owned by that Ireland-based mail-order company ( whose name I cannot remember) - got it - Chain Reaction - hence Sean Kelly's involvement in marketing the brand.
Old Ned referred to the various bonded frames that were being advertised in Cycling Weekly in 1989 ie LOOK, ALTEC, TVT, and TANGE. As far as I remember the last two in the list were being offerd not by Settle Cycles, but by the Bespoke Bicycle Company.
Despite this fairly detailed account of the French bonded cycle frame industry, mainly based in and around St Etienne and Lyon..and although the firms were independent of each other..they did tend to share some of the same suppliers of castings, tubing etc. At one time ALAN's Record Carbonio carbon-tubed frame used tubes made by TCT, a sister company to TVT.
As has already been contributed, quite a few companies and individuals had built aluminium bonded frames by the early 80s, but it took the combination of the Italian company ALAN and the French company VITUS..to promote them, in large series, to a wider public.
The principle difference in construction of these two large scale manufacturers is that ALAN used tubes bonded and screwed into external lugs..that look like lugs, and VITUS used lugs bonded internally into the tubes ie there was no apparent lug..just a joint between the tubes and the cast aluminium joints.
ALAN frames appeared earlier than the VITUS 979 - this one making its public appearance at the Salon de Deux Roues in Paris in September 1979 - hence 979. The later VITUS top level frame the 992, appeared in September 1992, as an attempt to produce a high performace frame to compete with the bonded carbon ones, such as the TVTs and LOOKs that were appearing on the scene.
However other smaller French manufacturers had made bonded alloy frames before Vitus and possibly before Alan, firms such as DURAVIA and CMP..both based in the Lyon area. Certainly the Duravia looked very much like an Alan..or vice-versa ! In the mid-70s Vitus had a project underway to produce a bonded frame, in the first instance using their steel tubes bonded into steel lugs, following a series of frames made by a St Etienne-based builder called MIOSOTIS. Then VITUS teamed up with him to produce a frame using steel external lugs with aluminium tubes bonded into them..this tended to look a little like an ALAN. A variation on this frame made in about 1976/77 had aluminium tubes bonded into large aluminiun lugs..a bit like an ALAN
Finally VITUS went the whole hog and teamed up with MIOSOTIS, another St Etienne builder called Roger Roche and finally with France's largest producer of aluminium tubes, Pechiney, to develop a bonded aluminium-tubed frame. An off-shoot of Vitus, a firm called BADOR joined the group along with Agenieux-CLB, the brake maker, who manufactured all the cast lugs. The end result was the 979.
At first Vitus, a maker of steel tubes, not frames, intended to sell the 979 as a kit of tubes and lugs for other builders to bond together, but such was the response to the first frames exhibited that the firm decided to set up a frame building unit within Vitus to build the frames in-house. TVT, a specialist manufacturer of tubes in carbon and glass-fibre was never ever involved with the Vitus 979 project ; their first frame was not produced until a couple of years later when they had observed the first of the carbon-fibre-tubed Vitus 979s on the market. I imported the first three TVT frames into the UK in 1981
Duralinox - the name of the Pechiney tubing - frames were available in standard colours of silver, red, deep blue, purple, and black. The champagne colour was unique to Peugeot, the pink/rose to Mercier, a deep gold to KAS, an emerald green also to some team, and the light blue to Kelly's SEM-France-Loire team. A white epoxy-coated one was also produced as a special.
To cash in on the success of the bonded frames VITUS then produced the 797 and the Futural models..two lower quality models, but which were also available as cyclo-cross frames. Peugeot wanted exclusivity of the 979 but didn't get it. Later they produced their own Pechiney-tubed frame called the Comete..a mid-priced model.
I used to import Vitus Duralinox direct from Vitus and have never known a frame to fail disastrously ie without warning. In the event of a failure..or decollage - a bonded joint working loose - there would be advance warning as the frame tended to creek. VITUS also bonded carbon-tubed frames and some failures/debondings were noted in these models. However the internal spigots or stubs which entered and were bonded inside the tubes were quite long, preventing any chance of the frame collapsing whilst at the same time providing quite a large bonding area for the epoxy adhesive. One weak point common to many of the aluminium and carbon frames of that era was the lack of a detachable and, therefore, easily replaceable rear gear hanger. The hangers were integral to the rear drop-outs. In the event of a breakage or the thread wearing out, the whole drop-out had to be replaced.
ALTEC were produced by a smaller company in Villeurbanne near Lyon. At first glance they looked much like Duralinox frames but on closer inspection they were more refined in that the ends of the tubes were profiled to give a splined appearance, and the seat-stay tops were more elegant - a type of wrap-over. The Spanish team BH used them both in aluminium-tubed and carbon-tubed versions for a couple of years.
VITUS introduced the avant-garde looking 992 to try to keep some of the burgeoning market for bonded frames. By ovalising the ends of some tubes they both gave the frame a more streamlined appearance while at the same time increasing the bond area in an attempt to eliminate any creeking and debonding. At the height of the 979 sales period Vitus employed 196 staff..but this number reduced dramatically when carbon composites and TIG-welded aluminium frames became popular., At one stage in the company's later life the firm waas bought by TIME. Now the name is owned by that Ireland-based mail-order company ( whose name I cannot remember) - got it - Chain Reaction - hence Sean Kelly's involvement in marketing the brand.
Old Ned referred to the various bonded frames that were being advertised in Cycling Weekly in 1989 ie LOOK, ALTEC, TVT, and TANGE. As far as I remember the last two in the list were being offerd not by Settle Cycles, but by the Bespoke Bicycle Company.
Despite this fairly detailed account of the French bonded cycle frame industry, mainly based in and around St Etienne and Lyon..and although the firms were independent of each other..they did tend to share some of the same suppliers of castings, tubing etc. At one time ALAN's Record Carbonio carbon-tubed frame used tubes made by TCT, a sister company to TVT.
