quiksilver wrote:I have an early Viscount, think its a 71 or 72 model. Its been converted to fixed gear, rides quite nice but I did have a few issues with it. Particulaly the BB and chainline. I think it must have been updated at some point in its life as it doesn't have the pressed bearing BB or the Deathfork.
Hope the stuff below is useful.
Born out of the ashes of the failed company Lambert, Viscount commenced production in 1974. In the UK it was not until 1976 that Viscount first produced a bike, the "Aerospace Victor" with a part lugged but mainly fillet brazed frame. In the US 1976 saw the introduction of the "Sebring" model which had a fully lugged frame albeit one that was made in Taiwan. All Viscounts before these two had the "Aerospace" frame so named because of the special steel tubing it was constructed from which was the same as that used for aircraft fuselages. These Aerospace frames were built on the same jigs as the Lambert ones using the same tubing. They are easy to recognize because the tubes are joined with a fillet braze (no lugs) and the bottom bracket shell has no threads. The crank was bolted to a steel spindle which turned in two sealed bearings. These pressed in bearings were held captive by circlips which sat in machined grooves on the bottom bracket spindle. Incidentally, this simple engineering solution was used by Klein on many of their earlier frames. The only difference was that Klein used Loctite rather than circlips!!
If your frame has a threaded bottom bracket shell then it is either a post 1977 Viscount jobbie, made at the Potters Bar factory or a 1976 onwards re imported Taiwanese frame off a US Sebring! Between 1974 and 1977 Viscounts were made at the former Lambert factory in Bilston. For me, these "Aerospace" Viscounts are the ones to have. The frames show some real brazing craftsmanship (if you don't believe me have a go at low temperature fillet brazing!) and the rest of the bike had some nice examples of innovative engineering carried over - but, crucially, in a way that worked - from Lambert's engineers.
As for the "death fork", where do we start? Viscount Aerospace bikes were fitted with a fork that was similar to the Lambert fork but crucially it was redesigned and as a consequence held together in a much stronger way than its predecessor. Breakages were VERY rare.
This is not what you will have read elsewhere but it is true. The companies own fork recall statistics show that less than 1% of all forks sold actually broke. And that's from a total sale of over 30,000 bikes: a large enough number to be statistically significant. I have 3 "death forks" one of which has done 60,000 miles and been raced in cyclocross championships. They have all been crashed big time yet all are in one very solid piece. The internet is notorious for developing myths or at the very least feeding and nurturing minor and quite common problems into a global phenomenon. Its funny really. A global "death fork" recall for Cervelo seems to have gone by with barely a whimper.
Don't know about you but I have seen plenty of broken 531 frame tubes in my time yet there has never been a recall on that stuff. Quite right too. The reality of metals (and carbon too!) is that sometimes s*** happens. Check out the scary websites full of images of broken Campy, Shimano, Mavic, Cervelo, etc. stuff if you are not convinced.
Look forwards to seeing your photo soon. Here is one of my Viscounts, a 1977 Aerospace Pro: