I'm personally not a great fan of collections of parts. Can't see the point of hoarding all that stuff. Hang it all on mint frames and then hang em on your wall by all means.
This topic is straying into the old vs new debate again that oft rears its ugly head. So to take it back to the value /importance of NOS may I take FarmField to task regarding his theory on remaking parts.....
Lets look at at a XT rear mech. Say 50 separate precision made parts in alloys, steel, bronze, nylon etc. To make it will have cost Shimano millions of Yen to design and then tool up 20-30 different machines to make. And that's just one part. Thumbies would need several other machines and so on and so forth. It would cost tens of thousands to make that rear mech and its just not worth it. The £800,000 reproduction Ferarri on the other hand suddenly looks to be excellent value for money!
So we arrive back at ecconomics. There are maybe 6000-7000 retrobikers worldwide, there is simply not the demand to justify the huge investment to remake these parts; how many retrobikers would pay £1,200-1300 for a plane jane XT rear mech? There is an great irony here that a beautifully machined and annodized PAULS rear mech can be reproduced easily and relatively much much cheaper than our theoretical Repro XT- therefore should a NOS XT be worth ten times more than a Pauls??
So what we have now is all we will have- ever. There may be execptions such as tyres ( I think amberwalls will be back in fashion within the year and the shops will be full of them- but that's an other debate) and some other CNC goodies could be reproduced by the talented fans such as Raymond Mole but on a whole reproductions of hardware will never happen in my opinion
I do however whole heartedly agree with his statement that the SWB 250 is a better car than the GTO
Si
This topic is straying into the old vs new debate again that oft rears its ugly head. So to take it back to the value /importance of NOS may I take FarmField to task regarding his theory on remaking parts.....
Lets look at at a XT rear mech. Say 50 separate precision made parts in alloys, steel, bronze, nylon etc. To make it will have cost Shimano millions of Yen to design and then tool up 20-30 different machines to make. And that's just one part. Thumbies would need several other machines and so on and so forth. It would cost tens of thousands to make that rear mech and its just not worth it. The £800,000 reproduction Ferarri on the other hand suddenly looks to be excellent value for money!
So we arrive back at ecconomics. There are maybe 6000-7000 retrobikers worldwide, there is simply not the demand to justify the huge investment to remake these parts; how many retrobikers would pay £1,200-1300 for a plane jane XT rear mech? There is an great irony here that a beautifully machined and annodized PAULS rear mech can be reproduced easily and relatively much much cheaper than our theoretical Repro XT- therefore should a NOS XT be worth ten times more than a Pauls??
So what we have now is all we will have- ever. There may be execptions such as tyres ( I think amberwalls will be back in fashion within the year and the shops will be full of them- but that's an other debate) and some other CNC goodies could be reproduced by the talented fans such as Raymond Mole but on a whole reproductions of hardware will never happen in my opinion
I do however whole heartedly agree with his statement that the SWB 250 is a better car than the GTO
Si
