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Titan stems and bars

Peter Underwood

Sylvere Maes-Kint bars and Titan stems were advertised for sale pre-WW2 and sold until the early 80s. The first (pre-war?) stems had two locating pins underneath to stop the ferrule rotating on the bars. Many of the Titan stems are date-stamped on the underside. Some have aluminium bolts for the expander and bar clamps.

Early Titan bar/stem sets (note alloy bar clamp bolt) with engravings on the ferrules as follows: “Tour de France”, “S. Maes” and “Depose” on the left side plus “Champione du Monde”, “M Kint” and “Brevette” on the right.

The later 50s version engravings are more pictorial, having an engraved globe on the left side with “M. Kint” across the Equator and “A. Schotte” underneath the globe. On the right-hand side they have an outline map of France with “S. Maes” across the middle and “Depose Brevette” across the bottom.

Titan also produced an 'underslung' Titan track stem and track bend bar. From mid 50's the name Van Steenbergen was added to A. Schotte and S. Kint.

I believe there are other combinations of the wording on these bars. It would make a good subject for someone to research as a table could be formed which would help to identify the age if the bars do not have the date stamp. The riders names were incorporated the year after they won a World Championship.