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The Catalog of Reminiscence

The Invitation for Cycling by Mr.Gami

Part 63: Sugino Engineering in 1965




Here is the catalog of Sugino engineering in 1965. Present company name is Sugino Techno. Sugino have specialized in chain wheel until now.
From the catalog, you will know that the Cottered crank was the mainstream for sports bicycle in those days. Cotter pin was used to hold the crank to the crank shaft. It was a wedge-shaped pin which was inserted from the side of crank. The pin had a nut to hold it after it was inserted.
Nowadays, bicycle which was equipped with the cottered cranks is not sold in the market any more, include city bicycle. When I rode a bicycle which had a loose pin, the cranks made strange sound such as gcok-cok-cokh for each rotation. As for the cotter-less crank, you could fix the cranks without pins. It had been the luxurious parts until 70s. I think this catalog was issued in 1965. Because though the model Pro-dynamic in the advertisement in the August 1965 issue of New Cycling magazine was a cottered type, the same model in October issue became a cotter-less type.

The catalog was offered by Mr. Old cyclist.




These were the front and back cover.
The model Pro-dynamic was advertised as the highest grade and the lightest crank in those days.
As for the back cover, I've just known the gSh mark of Sugino was such design in those days.





This is the inside of the catalog.
Back in those days, Sugino had imported and sold hub of Atom-Normandy, wing-nut of Huret, and bottle of TA. A number of road racing bicycles in the catalog of domestic mass-production maker of those days were equipped with TA bottle.





This is the model Pro-dynamic. It was still the cottered type. I had been using Pro-dynamic cotter-less type for a long time.





This is the previous model of Maxy. It was composed of the steel cottered cranks and the aluminum lings.
As for the product name "High Double", I've just known it.





These are Triple and Four-Fold ("Howard" was the name in Japan). In comparison with present chain wheel, the standard gear combination 51-48-45-36 of Four-Fold was very close ratio.





These were produced as racing model.
I had read one article about Mighty 5. It said that though Mighty 5 was developed with whole company's ability, it wasn't bought so many in the domestic market. However, I thought it had evolved into Mighty-compe later.
Dynamic was a hollow crank which was called "Dyna-hollow". It might be a prototype of Shimano hollow-tech.





This is the lineup of import parts.
The catalog explained "Sugino has made technical tie-up with Maillard which is French top maker, and begin knock-down production from June 1965" (means Sugino import the hub parts from France and compose them at Japan).
I suppose Sugino had done the business with considering the improvement of Japanese bicycle.





This is the cotter-less model Mighty 5 of Mr. Old cyclist who offered the catalog.
Back in those days, it was sold in the combination with Campagnolo BB shaft. The shaft was not built-in type, was the type that the ball bearing cup was inserted.
I was surprised when I heard that Campagnolo had supplied their BB shaft to the gear maker of the Far East. Unfortunately I don't have any information about this matter. Please contact me if you know the detail of it.






inserted by FC2 system