Japanische Fahrräder und Komponenten: Unterschied zwischen den Versionen

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After the Second World War, Japan was primarily known for making cheap knockoffs of foreign designs, competing on the basis of cheap labor. This began to turn around in the camera and electronics industries in the 1950s, but Japanese companies didn't figure out how to make and sell bicycles for the U.S. market until the early 1970s.

As the 1970s opened, the U.S. market for adult bicycles was basically owned by the French and English. While Japanese bicycles were manufactured to very tight tolerances, and nicely finished (considerably better than their European competition), the Japanese had not yet come to terms with the average American's being taller and heavier than the average Japanese. (This gap was wider at the time than it is now, due to the privations the Japanese population suffered during and after the war.)

he most widely distributed Japanese bike of this era was sold under the name Royce Union. This was a 10-speed, pretty much all steel except for the handlebar stem and the Dia Compe brakes. This bike was only available in one size, 20", which was considerably too small for an average American man. It was equipped with Araya steel rims, which were beautifully made, much smoother and truer than European steel rims of the era...but not strong enough to withstand the weight of an average American rider. This was partly due to design, and partly due to the fact that Japanese steel was not as good as European (nor American) steel.

Even though these bikes were not durable, they did have their good points, most particularly the Shimano Lark rear derailer. Although the Lark was quite heavy, it shifted markedly better than the French Huret Allvits and Simplex Prestiges that were coming through on the bikes from Europe.

Aluminum-alloy cotterless cranks had been a high-end item, not found on the run-of-the-mill European ten-speeds that sold for around $150 in the early 1970s bike boom years. The Sugino Maxy cotterless crank was a game changer. The inner chainring was attached using the 110 mm bolt circle, which survives to this day in very wide use. The Maxy's outer chainring was swaged to the right crank, and so was not interchangeable -- though it was possible to saw off a worn chainwheel and bolt a replacement one to the remaining spider.The Maxy was much lighter and easier to work on than cottered cranks, and gave a competitive advantage to mid-priced Japanese derailer-equipped bicycles.

Although Japanese derailers had appeared as original equipment on Japanese bikes, the SunTour VGT was the first model to make a big splash in the aftermarket. The VGT was a wide-range touring derailer, using SunTour's patented "slant parallelogram" design. The VGT was a reasonably light derailer, with a large chain take-up capacity, and a very light action, compared to the early '60s designs from Simplex and Huret. The shifting ease and performance were dramatically superior. When a rider who had been using French derailers first tried out a VGT, the effect was as startling as the later transition from friction to index shifting.

[Agreed -- been there, done that. My first ten-speed had a plastic Simplex derailer. The flex of the derailer could be felt through the lever. The Simplex would only shift to the next sprocket by pulling the lever past the centered position for that sprocket -- and then sometimes the shift would be to the second sprocket. The VGT's feel was crisp and clean. -- John Allen]

The first Japanese company to figure out the U.S. market was Nichibei Fuji (not to be confused with all the other Japanese companies that are called "Fuji"; "Fuji" is roughly the Japanese equivalent of "Acme.") The U.S. importer at the time was Eugene Ritvo, from the Boston area, and he seems to have been the first knowledgeable U.S. cyclist to succeed in getting a major Japanese bike maker to listen to him.

The S10-S had aluminum handlebars and stem, Sunshine high-flange hubs, and a Belt leather saddle. This model name was continued for several years. In 1977 it was upgraded to 12-speed, and later the name was changed to S12-S.

This means that the smaller sizes have shorter top tubes, and the larger sizes have longer top tubes. This is generally a great improvement. European manufacturers of mass-market bicycles ahd generally used the same top-ure length regarless os standover height, resulting in a long reach for shorter cyclists.

Japanese tires also made an important advance. European tires had been made with cotton cord, which was prone to damage, even from sharp pebbles and which was subject to mildew and rot. Japanese tire manufacturers began using nylon, which is much stronger, and also allows a tire to be lighter. Because there was no longer a need for a substantial covering of rubber on the tire's sidewalls to protect against rot, they could be made thinner, decreasing rolling resistance.

Throughout the '70s and early '80s, "Touring" was the hottest buzzword in the industry, and it was hard to find any bicycle part that didn't feature "tour" or "touring" in its name or advertising.

The bicycle industry has always tended toward a "pack mentality." Everybody wants to make whatever is most popular, and nothing else. At the end of the '86 model year, all of the manufacturers said, with one voice "Whoah! Touring bikes are over!. No more touring bikes! Now we will all build...mountain bikes! Touring bikes became extinct at the production level. Well into the early '90s, a cyclist seeking a touring bike would be sold a left-over '86.

Around 1987, the bottom fell out of the dollar, and it became worth less than half what it had been against the Yen. Japanese bikes became un-affordable for most Americans.

Ten years previously, the Japanese industry, under American guidance, made the transition from shoddy bikes, unsuited to the U.S. market, to a position of dominance in the U.S. market. This cycle was repeated as the Taiwanese bicycle industry, under Japanese guidance, learned to build bicycles with the design and quality needed to succeed in the U.S. market.

J.I.S. (Japanese Industrial Standard) headsets have a 27.0mm fork steerer crown race press-fit diameter and are found mostly on older and lower-quality Japanese bicycles. ISO headsets, the current standard, have 26.4mm diameter. The International Standards Organization (ISO) developed standards in the 1980s, with one goal being to make the new standard as compatible as possible with existing standards. The larger J.I.S diameter can be milled down to the smaller one and the 1 inch (25.4mm) x 24 TPI fork steerer threading is compatible with that of ISO, British and Italian forks, though not with Raleigh or French.

Throughout the '70s and '80s, the Japanese bicycle industry was polarized into two contending factions: Shimano vs. everybody else. "Everybody else" mainly amounted to a loose association between SunTour (derailers, shifters & freewheels), Sugino (cranks) and Dia Compe (brakes.) While European and American manufacturers would feel free to pick and choose components, Japanese bikes would generally be equipped with parts entirely from one camp or the other.

Unfortunately for SunTour et. al., Shimano's willingness to keep trying new ideas led to some real improvements in technology, and eventually the more conservative parts makers got left behind like the European manufacturers before them.

Indexed shifting was not a new idea. It went back at least to the 1930s. The problem was to get it to work well enough to be worth the trouble. In the early '80s, both SunTour and Shimano were working on the problem. SunTour had a system called "Trimec" which was offered as a gimmick feature on a few mid-range models, but it didn't work too well, and SunTour abandoned it.

(I bought a first-generation Dura Ace shift lever set when they first came out. I didn't think the indexing would amount to much, but I needed a new set of levers, and loved the feel of the Shimano units. Once I had them installed on my favorite bike, with a SunTour Cyclone derailer, Regina Oro 6-speed freewheel on a Campagnolo Record hub, and a Sedisport chain, I couldn't resist trying to get the indexing to work. It wasn't that hard to do, mainly I just needed to install an adjusting barrel in the Cyclone derailer so I could fine-tune the cable tension. This system is still going strong, and indexes just fine.)

Having persuaded people that they needed to match their shift lever, derailer, freewheel and chain, Shimano gradually extended the "dedication" principle as a way to grab more market share for its cranksets, hubs, etc.

Shimano introduced cassette "Freehubs" around 1980. Initially, the major selling point was that it was easier to change clusters as a "cassette" so that a racer could customize gearing for a particular course. These hubs also had a superior axle/bearing design which made them pretty much immune from broken/bent axles. They were a hard sell, though, because if you bought one, you could only use Shimano cassettes, while a conventional thread-on hub would let you use anybody's thread-on freewheel. Freehubs didn't really catch on until Shimano introduced 7-speed S.I.S...and offered 7-speed freewheels only in close-ratio sizes appropriate to road-racing bikes...so, if you wanted a 21-speed MTB in 1989 (and everybody wanted a 21-speed MTB in 1989!), you had to have a Shimano Freehub.

In fairness to Shimano, I should add that the introduction of 7-speed MTB shifting coincided with the introduction of Hyperglide, which was the final nail in SunTour's coffin. This brilliant innovation used specially shaped sprocket teeth and ramps on the sides of the sprockets to provide notably smoother shifting. Previous derailer shifting had worked by having the derailer move the chain sideways so that the resulting chain angle would cause the chain to derail from the sprocket it was on. Once the chain was derailed, with any luck, it would soon fall onto the next sprocket, and soon mesh with it. With Hyperglide, however, the sprockets were specifically designed so that the ramps and special teeth would cause the chain to be fully engaged with the new sprocket before it disengaged from the old one. The result was smoother, quieter, faster shifting than anyone had believed possible. Part of what made this work was that the rotational position of each sprocket was aligned with that of the adjacent sprocket. This cannot be done with sprockets that thread onto a freewheel, it only works with splined sprockets that slide on in only one orientation. This is more easily done on a freehub cassette than with a thread-on freewheel, due to clearance problems.

The following is a list of some Japanese bicycle brands that I have come across, with scattered information about them. I welcome additions and corrections, most of this material is from memory, which may be faulty.

     Univega was later a division of Derby, along with Nishiki and Raleigh, but the Univega and Nishiki brand names were retired in 2001 so that Derby could concentrate on its Raleigh brand.

Akisu

     Currently #2 supplier of high quality spokes (after DT). These are made by Asahi.

Hozan (HKC)

     Crank pullers.

Center-pull caliper brakes were pretty much out of fashion by the beginning of the 1980s.

Mountain bikes with "U-brakes" under the chainstays were mainly from the 1987 model year, though some were made in '86 and '88.

==Siehe auch==

* [http://www.classicrendezvous.com/Japan/japan.htm Classicrendezvous: klassische japanische Fahrräder (englisch)]