Re:
Worth a read here (in English):
https://www.bikeradar.com/features/pro- ... aix-bikes/
https://www.bikeradar.com/features/pari ... e-evolved/
“That was my first full suspension design for Bianchi, the one that Museeuw rode to eventual embarrassment at Paris-Roubaix,” said Matt Harvey, product manager for Bianchi USA at the time and now the head of Enduro Bearings.
“I eventually did two designs at Bianchi, but this one was probably the best. [It was] a two-inch short travel design that could be used for cross-country MTB and a road bike. It only had two pivots, relying on the seat stays to flex a couple of degrees, making a much stiffer rear end that didn’t wag around.
“This was also the eventual problem, because a cromoly rear end can flex thousands of cycles this small amount whereas the Italian factory, against my pleading, made it out of 6061 [aluminium] without heat treating it.”
And
Further dooming the project was the aluminium’s comparatively large diameter and the last minute assembly.
“There was a pretty sharp bend to clear the chainrings from the pivot point, about three inches back,” Harvey continued. “The problem was when they assembled it, the Dura-Ace bottom bracket was so narrow that the inner chainring was rubbing on the stay so they put a rag in the vise and squeezed it.”
:facepalm:
and finishing second by only 8 millimeters behind Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle in 1993, riding this Bianchi, with a TIG welded steel frame and a special suspension stem, produced by the Turin-based company 3T, equipped with an internal piston with coil spring and oil, like the shock absorbers of downhill MTB
