Biketyson

09/09/2026

Less than one month to go until L’Eroica 2026.

The roads are waiting. The bikes are ready. The spirit of L’Eroica is getting closer.

See you in Gaiole in Chianti. 🍷

08/09/2026

🇯🇵 SHIMANO DURA-ACE “BLACK EDITION” 🚴‍♂️

PART 4 — THE COMPLETE BOXED GROUPSET

After discovering some of its components separately, it is finally time… to open the box 🤩

In the first three parts, we discovered the Crane rear derailleur, the shift levers and then the crankset.

But to understand what Shimano was really building in the mid-1970s, we now need to take a step back.

Because inside these two remarkable boxes, a large part of the first-generation Dura-Ace groupset appears before our eyes.

🔴 ALL DURA-ACE… IN TWO BOXES

Derailleurs, shift levers, brakes, hubs, headset, crankset, bottom bracket, freewheel…

The Japanese brand was beginning to think of the bicycle as a complete system of components designed to work together.

A philosophy that would become fundamental to the history of Dura-Ace, and one that Shimano would take even further with the EX generation. Shimano itself describes the 1978 Dura-Ace EX 7200 as having been developed around this idea of “system components.”

For now, only the pedals and seatpost are missing to complete the set…

⚫ BLACK, THE SIGNATURE OF A LIMITED EDITION

At a time when silver still largely dominated racing components, black became a true distinguishing feature here, much like the Campagnolo Super Record, which had also made black one of its visual signatures.

🇯🇵 DURA-ACE FINDS ITS PLACE

When Dura-Ace appeared in 1973, Shimano directly took on the European racing market and manufacturers that were already firmly established.

To put its new groupset to the test at the highest level of European racing, Shimano partnered with the Belgian Flandria–Carpenter–Shimano team as early as 1973, whose riders included Walter Godefroot and the young Freddy Maertens. Feedback from the riders then allowed the Japanese manufacturer to progressively improve its components.

Five years later, Dura-Ace would take another major step forward with its first major generational change:

Dura-Ace EX 7200 — 1978

Then came AX, 7400, SIS…

But before all these developments, the foundations were already there for a name that would become one of the most famous in cycling history: DURA-ACE. 🇯🇵

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➡️ COMING NEXT — PART 5: THE GROUPSET HASN’T REVEALED ALL ITS SECRETS YET…

We’ll discover the other components that completed the Dura-Ace “Black Edition.”



Peace & Ride.

05/09/2026

🇫🇷 CLB COMPACT BRAKES 🚴‍♂️

WERE THEY THE LIGHTEST BRAKES IN THE WORLD?

⚖️ THE RACE TO SAVE GRAMS

By the late 1970s, weight had become a genuine obsession in high-end cycling.

Titanium, aluminium, Zycral, drilled or machined parts: some manufacturers were looking to save a few grams wherever possible.

In Saint-Chamond, near Saint-Étienne, one French manufacturer would take this philosophy particularly far.

Its name: CLB.

For Charles Lozier Bourgoin, the historic French brake specialist, this quest would notably result in a tiny brake caliper:

The Compact.

🇫🇷 AROUND 90 GRAMS

Place a CLB Compact next to a conventional brake from the same era, and the difference is immediately obvious.

A difference in size you can see immediately — everything seems to have been reduced to the bare essentials.

The arms are extremely thin, the caliper remarkably small and compact, and every component seems to have been designed with one question in mind:

Can we save a few more grams?

CLB claimed a weight of around 90 grams per caliper, or approximately 180 grams for a pair.

A remarkable figure at a time when a conventional pair of competition brake calipers generally weighed considerably more.

But at CLB, the pursuit of weight savings didn’t stop with the calipers.

The levers followed exactly the same philosophy: extensively drilled aluminium and, on the lightest versions, a body made from Delrin, a particularly lightweight plastic, hidden beneath the rubber hood.

🪶 CABLES AND HOUSINGS

The brand also offered ultralight brake housings using aluminium instead of the traditional steel construction.

A complete CLB cable set of this type could weigh around 85 grams.

🔬 SMALL, BUT NOT SIMPLISTIC

The Compact wasn’t simply a brake from which material had been removed at random.

CLB already had extensive experience in manufacturing braking systems and lightweight alloy components.

But with the Compact, this philosophy reached something of an extreme.

🛑 BUT DID THEY ACTUALLY STOP YOU?

As is often the case when a component is pushed very far in one direction, compromises have to be accepted.

User experiences are divided.

Some consider the braking perfectly adequate when properly adjusted, while others describe them more as speed reducers than actual brakes.

But judging the Compact purely on braking power would probably miss the point.

This brake belonged to an era when the pursuit of the ultralight bicycle had itself become a genuine field of experimentation.

🚴‍♂️ ANDRÉ SABLIÈRE AND THE ULTRALIGHT BICYCLES

It is therefore hardly surprising to find CLB Compact brakes on some French machines built according to exactly the same philosophy.

André Sablière is one of the most interesting examples.

Sablière built extraordinarily light bicycles on which virtually every component was selected according to its weight.

Aluminium frames, Huret Jubilee derailleurs, lightweight wheels, sometimes modified components… and, of course, CLB brakes.

On this type of machine, saving around a hundred grams on a pair of brake calipers made perfect sense.

For those who would like to discover these machines, I particularly recommend Mathieu Pelardy’s Instagram account, Le Vélo Ancien, where you can see several beautifully restored Sablière bicycles as well as CLB brakes.

🧪 CLB DIDN’T JUST MAKE BRAKES

Looking at what was happening elsewhere in the French bicycle industry, at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s one frame appeared that would come to symbolise this pursuit of lightness:

The Vitus 979, with its Duralinox aluminium tubes inserted and bonded into alloy lugs.

And underneath some Vitus 979 frames, a familiar name can be found engraved on the bottom bracket shell: CLB.

The company was indeed involved in manufacturing some of the aluminium components used in the construction of these frames.

This detail places the Compact in a much broader context: CLB wasn’t simply trying to manufacture a lightweight brake.

The company belonged to an entire French industrial ecosystem that was experimenting with lightweight alloys and attempting to push the limits of how little a racing bicycle could weigh.

🏆 SO, THE LIGHTEST IN THE WORLD?

At around 90 grams claimed per caliper, the CLB Compact was unquestionably among the lightest competition brakes of its era.

Manufacturers specialising in lightweight components were experimenting extensively, and claimed weights didn’t always correspond to the same configurations.

One thing is certain:

CLB had gone extremely far, and almost half a century later, you have to look towards highly sophisticated modern carbon calipers to get significantly below those figures.

🇫🇷 WEIGHT ABOVE ALL

The CLB Compact represented an idea pushed almost to its logical conclusion:

If every gram matters, why should the brakes be any exception?

After the Modolo Kronos, which I discussed in my previous post and which sought to combine lightness and aerodynamics, the CLB Compact tells the story of another obsession from that era: the absolute pursuit of weight savings.

And when we see manufacturers today using carbon, titanium and highly sophisticated machining to save just a few dozen grams, these tiny French calipers suddenly don’t seem quite so archaic.

So, in the end… IN YOUR OPINION, WAS THE CLB COMPACT AN EXCELLENT BRAKE… OR SIMPLY THE PRODUCT OF A RADICAL OBSESSION WITH LIGHTWEIGHT DESIGN?



Peace & Ride 🚴‍♂️🤙

02/09/2026

🇮🇹 MODOLO KRONOS 🚴‍♂️

WERE THEY REALLY MADE FOR BRAKING?

🔬 A PROTOTYPE PUT INTO PRODUCTION

At the beginning of the 1980s, two things were starting to obsess the cycling industry: weight and aerodynamics.

In Italy, Modolo decided to push both particularly far, developing a braking system that looked more like an experiment than a conventional product.

The first Kronos levers appeared in 1980, followed in 1981 by the aerodynamic brake calipers.

Developed primarily for time trials and the pursuit of aerodynamic performance, the Kronos would remain extremely rare: Modolo’s historical archives mention production limited to around 3,000 calipers.

More than forty years later, they have become true collectors’ pieces.

🧪 COMPOSITES… IN 1980

The levers were made from a resin and carbon-based composite material, long before such materials became widespread in the cycling industry.

Their shape was streamlined and the cable routing was aero-style: the housing could be hidden beneath the handlebar tape, eliminating the large cable loop in front of the bars.

The centre-pull calipers followed the same philosophy: particularly compact, low, narrow and streamlined, they featured an aerodynamic silhouette several years before the appearance of the famous Campagnolo C-Record Delta brakes.

🌬️ BRAKING PERFORMANCE?

Some archives associated with Modolo describe the braking as deliberately “soft”, intended more to modulate speed when approaching a corner than to provide the stopping power of a traditional road brake.

In other words, braking just enough to lose as little speed as possible.

In return, power and stiffness would never become the qualities for which the Kronos was famous.

💰 TECHNOLOGY CAME AT A PRICE

At the time of their introduction, the Kronos sat at the very top of the Modolo range, and that exclusivity came at a price.

A period price list gives a clear idea of their positioning: a pair of Kronos brake levers was listed at around 83,000 Italian lire, compared with 39,000 lire for the Modolo Orion.

More than twice the price: the Kronos were clearly not made for every budget.

Taking inflation into account, those 83,000 lire would represent the equivalent of around €250 in purchasing power today

♣️ KRONOS AT COLNAGO

The Kronos philosophy naturally found its place on some of the most spectacular aerodynamic bicycles of the era.

With the Colnago Oval CX, Ernesto Colnago also pushed the pursuit of aerodynamic efficiency particularly far: profiled Columbus tubing, integrated cables, and gear shifters moved from the sides of the down tube to its upper surface.

Some Oval CX examples were fitted with Modolo Kronos controls, perfectly suited to this pursuit of integration and lightness.

⚖️ 195 GRAMS

The Kronos also seems to have been designed around another obsession: lightness.

A pair of Kronos CP4 calipers weighs only around 195 grams, a spectacular figure for the period.

But contrary to what one might think, the Kronos were not the lightest brakes of their generation.

In France, the CLB Compact Professionnel went even further: the brand claimed less than 90 grams per caliper, or less than 180 grams for the pair.

CLB even described them as “a Formula 1 brake”.

For Modolo, the difference lay elsewhere: the brand was not simply trying to save a few grams; it was simultaneously rethinking materials, shape, cable routing and brake aerodynamics.

🚴‍♂️ KRONOS IN COMPETITION

The Kronos did not remain in a laboratory.

Roberto Visentini was notably seen racing with Kronos calipers and levers, an application that Modolo itself highlighted in its period documentation.

Then, in 1985, when Battaglin and FiR developed the incredible Pirana for Visentini, one of the most radical time-trial bikes of its era, the Kronos calipers had disappeared… but the Kronos levers were still there.

A fitting confirmation of the original purpose behind the KRONOS concept: to go fast.

🇮🇹 A FAILURE… OR A LABORATORY?

Still-experimental materials, featherweight construction, radical design, extremely limited production… and questionable braking performance.

The Kronos never replaced the traditional brake, but more than forty years later, look at what the cycling industry is pursuing today:

carbon, hidden cables, aerodynamics and the relentless hunt for grams.

The Kronos may not have been the best brake of its era, but it was certainly one of the boldest. And 46 years after its appearance, we are still talking about it.

After all, isn’t that also how we recognise an innovation that left its mark on its era?



Peace & Ride.

28/08/2026

🇯🇵 SHIMANO DURA-ACE AX 7300 🚴‍♂️

PART 1 — THE BRAKES OF THE FUTURE 💧

💬 These AX brakes: a masterpiece of engineering and design, or just an aerodynamic gimmick?…

The story begins in 1980. Cologne, Germany.

At IFMA (Internationale Fahrrad- und Motorrad-Ausstellung), the major international bicycle and motorcycle show, Shimano unveils a masterpiece: a futuristic groupset unlike anything else.

Its name: Dura-Ace AX, series 7300.

The objective is clear: to make aerodynamics a central element in component design, aiming to reduce air resistance by 20%.

Shimano takes the project so seriously that the company invests in building its own wind tunnel, allowing it to independently study and develop its new aerodynamic shapes.

And among the most spectacular components in the groupset are the brakes.

⚙️ THE BRAKE CALIPERS — BR-7300

Love them or hate them, they leave no one indifferent, and 46 years after they were made, their design still looks remarkably modern.

The BR-7300 calipers abandon the traditional side-pull design in favor of a center-pull system, with rounded, streamlined shapes designed to present as little resistance to the wind as possible.

Their operation is equally unusual: Shimano uses a Roller-Cam type system.

The brake cable runs down through the center of the caliper. When you apply the brakes, the cable pulls a central triangular plate fitted with small rollers. These rollers push the upper ends of the brake arms apart, which in turn forces the brake pads against the rim.

Everything seems to have been designed around the same idea: cutting through the air. But this pursuit came with compromises.

Adjustment required more attention, and the BR-7300s did not become famous for their braking power.

Historically, however, the BR-7300s are also interesting for another reason.

They appeared four years before the legendary Campagnolo C-Record Delta brakes.

With this model, the Japanese brand became the first to mass-market this revolutionary architecture.

🌬️ THE AERO BRAKE LEVERS — BL-7300

With its brake levers, Shimano tackled something we now take completely for granted: internally routed brake cables.

At the time, brake housing generally emerged above the hoods, creating the famous “rabbit ears” in front of the handlebars.

With the BL-7300, they disappear.

The cable and housing run along the handlebars, concealed beneath the handlebar tape.

This became known as “aero” routing.

The BL-7300s are considered the first aero brake levers, or at the very least among the major pioneers that would popularize this design.

An idea that seems obvious today.

In 1980, much less so…

Forty-six years later, however, their main enemy is no longer the wind.

It’s time.

The original blue rubber hoods often age very badly: the rubber hardens, dries out and eventually cracks or deteriorates.

Original examples in excellent condition have therefore become difficult to find.

Fortunately for restorers, near-identical reproduction hoods are available today, although they can quickly become rather expensive for two pieces of rubber.

💧 AN EXPERIMENT THAT DIDN’T CONVINCE EVERYONE

The Dura-Ace AX was bold.

Perhaps even too bold.

Shimano acknowledged that, despite the surprise generated by its unveiling, the AX series ultimately failed to meet users’ expectations, and its career was relatively short.

Looking back, Shimano describes this commercial failure as a valuable lesson in the company’s history.

As a result, by 1984 Shimano was heading in a different direction with Dura-Ace 7400 and its future SIS indexing system.

But AX had demonstrated something:

Aerodynamics could now influence the shape of even the smallest component on a racing bicycle.

And the brakes were only the beginning…

➡️ TO BE CONTINUED — PART 2: THE DERAILLEURS.


Peace & Ride.

17/08/2026

🚴‍♂️ THE MODOLO SPEEDY
“LA VIE CLAIRE” BRAKE SET

In the 1980s, Modolo didn’t just make brakes: the Italian brand also produced a range of other bicycle components.

But to complement the distinctive visual identity of the La Vie Claire team, Modolo produced a special brake set that has since become quite sought-after among collectors:

👉 the Modolo Speedy “La Vie Claire”.

It was a special edition of the Speedy, a brake already well established in Modolo’s range by the early 1980s.

What made this particular version stand out, however, wasn’t its mechanics… but its look. 😉

🎨 THE INFLUENCE OF PIET MONDRIAN

The brake calipers and levers featured a white finish decorated with small geometric patterns in red, yellow and blue — making the La Vie Claire identity instantly recognizable.

Like the team jersey and LOOK’s visual identity, the graphics drew inspiration from the work of Dutch painter Piet Mondrian.

It was a particularly bold aesthetic choice for bicycle components in the mid-1980s.

And nearly forty years later, that distinctive design is precisely what makes these brakes so recognizable and desirable among vintage bicycle collectors.

⚙️ THE SPEEDY RANGE

Technically, these brakes remained very much part of the Modolo Speedy family.

At the time, the Speedy range offered a more affordable alternative to Modolo’s prestigious top-end models, such as the Professional and Master Pro, used by Laurent Fignon on his 1983 Gitane Team Pro.

The Italian manufacturer offered its brakes in a variety of finishes and colours.

💡 AND SOME VERY INNOVATIVE BRAKE PADS

As early as 1983, the company introduced its famous D-0015 pads, made from a sintered material.

Modolo claimed they provided superior braking performance, particularly in wet conditions.

It was something of a revolution at a time when many riders were still using traditional rubber brake pads.

However, many users complained that these pads caused significant rim wear.

Modolo even linked the launch of its D-0015 pads — containing neither rubber nor asbestos — to Greg LeMond’s victory at the 1983 World Championships in Altenrhein.

A rather fitting detail when you consider that LeMond would later join Bernard Tapie’s La Vie Claire team.

And to lure the American away, Tapie made an extraordinary offer: $1 million over three years.

At the time, it was unheard of in professional cycling.

🏆 BUT BE CAREFUL: THESE WEREN’T THE BRAKES ON LEMOND’S KG86

The Modolo Speedy “La Vie Claire” brakes perfectly captured the team’s visual identity, but they were not the brakes fitted to the famous LOOK KG86 on which Greg LeMond won the 1986 Tour de France.

LeMond’s KG86 was equipped with Campagnolo C-Record components, together with the now-iconic LOOK PP75 clipless pedals.

In other words, the Modolo Speedy “La Vie Claire” has become above all a wonderful reminder of the distinctive aesthetic identity and powerful marketing universe built around the La Vie Claire team.

Peace & Ride.

17/08/2026

🇮🇹 Modolo Master Pro.
The World’s Finest Brake.

$250 brakes… back in 1983! 👀
That’s around $840 today when adjusted for inflation.

The “Formula 1 of brakes,” as Modolo called it!

« Modolo believes that there is only one way to build the world’s finest bicycle brakesets.

The Modolo World Champion Master Pro is fashioned of an impressive list of some of the world’s most exotic, and costly, materials.

Caliper arches are hot forged of incredibly tough Ergal alloy. Fibre alignment is insured and a 7075 hardness rating is achieved.

Pivot bolts are machined from titanium. To maintain strict aerospace tolerances, the contact surfaces and threading are machined a second time. Pivot washers are machined bronze, 24k gold plated and quite nearly impervious to oxidation and wear.

Brake shoes are uniquely sinterized D-0015, a composite that provides firm and consistent stopping power, wet or dry.

Yet the finest materials alone could not justify the Master Pro, not to mention their $250.00 price tag. To appreciate the craftsmanship, control and power you need only try them once. You’ll never want a brake that is anything less.

Fine Modolo brakesets are available in all price ranges.
Master Pro, Professional, Equipe and Speedy are trademarks of Modolo Adamo & C./Treviso.

modolo
The Winning Italian Technology.

Modolo products are distributed throughout the USA by professional bicycle dealers. »

*Technical details indicated by the arrows

On the pivot washers: “Machined bronze pivot washers, 24k gold finish.”

On the center shaft: “Titanium center shaft. Dual diameter, two-stage machined.”

On the cable fixing bolt: “Titanium articulating cable fixing bolt.”

On the calipers: “Ergal/7075 forged alloy calipers.”

On the caliper treatment: “Hard oxide anodizing for scratch and wear resistance.”

On the brake shoes: “Sinterized compound wet/dry brake shoes.”

On the levers: “Modolo Master Pro levers use exclusive alloy barrel/bronze bushing assembly for precise action.”

On the lever finish: “Levers finished and detailed front and back.”

On the lever: “Hard oxide surface treatment.”

On the hoods: “Anatomically shaped grips individually contoured for left and right hands.”

On the hoods: “Internally caverned hood design softens shocks for comfort and control.(Modolo patent)”

On the cables: “Modolo cables are internally coated with molybdenum bisulfide.”

23/07/2026

20/06/2026

KogaMiyata fullpro CBL DuraAce
Rahmenhöhe 56cm
Top Original Zustand
Praktisch ungefahren