Serious Mojo In The Shadow Of Power

Last week, I spotted a pair of Sun Tour shifters on eBay.  The item's location was listed as "New York, NY."  So I asked whether I could pick them up.

Turns out, the seller was even closer to where I live than I expected:  only about 4 kilometers away.  Woodside, Queens, to be exact.  And he said his "shop" was located behind a restaurant on one of the neighborhood's commercial strips.

The reason I'm not revealing the name of that restaurant, or the name of the shop, is that Damon asked me not to.  In fact, on his website, he says his "shop"--which is really more of a workshop--is in a "secret location" and that he meets customers only by appointment.

Damon is actually an engaging and friendly fellow.  The reason for his arrangement, he says, is that his shop--a garage, really--is a "passion" and he doesn't want to deal with the more mundane parts of the bike business.  (He once had a regular shop, he explained, and running it was nothing like he expected it to be.)  Also, I sensed that he wanted to deal only with customers who shared his passion for vintage bikes.

One of our common loves, as it turns out, is frames from British builders.  He showed me a Claud Butler from the '50's that he's fixing up, along with a few other frames from Claud's countrymen.  When I revealed my own love of Mercians, he knew he'd found a soulmate, at least in bicycle terms.

(Oh, and he did some of his studies for his profession--his "day job"--in Paris and, quelle coincidence, was living in the City of Light at the same time I was there. How do Francophiles become aficionados of British Frames?  Hmm...)

All of the frames in his "shop" were steel, except for one older Vitus bike.  Among his Butlers and early '80's Treks stood one of what might be the most sought-after (by collectors and enthusiasts) bike from a mass manufacturer:  Raleigh Lenton.  It was in really good shape, except for the cellulose fenders--which are almost always broken.  

I could have spent all day at that shop, and with Damon. Because he's trying not to publicize his operation too much, I didn't take photos--except for one particularly intriguing machine.

Damon equipped this Olmo city bike, which probably dates from the '50's or '60's, with Campagnolo Gran Sport equipment, except for the Weinmann centerpull brakes. (The Gran Sport brakes wouldn't have been long enough or played nice with the fenders.)  He was impressed that I've actually written posts about GS equipment and Weinmann brakes, but I was even more taken with some other features of that bike:

Those bars put those narrow "city bars" I see on hipsters' fixies to shame--both for function and style.  But perhaps the best (or at least my favorite) part is something Damon customized.

He bent it to accommodate the front derailleur.  That alone would have made me want to make a return trip to his "shop"--which is just a few blocks away from where Dick Power had his framebuilding shop and retail store.

Before I left, I noticed that he had some vintage Silca pumps that, he explained, had been stored away from sunlight which, apparently, is what makes the plastic on them brittle.  I bought one, in black, for Negrosa, the 1973 full-Campy Mercian I picked up last year.  I know that the Zefal HPX (or even the earlier HP and Competition) pumps are easier to use and sturdier, but most full-Campy bikes of the time had Silca Imperos--and Regina freewheels, which I also have, even though I know the SunTour New Winner and Winner Pro are better in almost every way.  

That trip was short but sweet, to say the least!

A Bike Spanner That Isn't Raleigh

If you bought a Raleigh bicycle before the 1970s, it might have come with this:

Even if you have never owned a Raleigh, there's a good chance that you've come across the Raleigh spanner (or what Yanks call "wrench").  You might even have one.  I did, for a long time.  I don't know whether I loaned it and never got it back, or simply lost it.

Anyway, Raleigh wasn't the only British bike maker to offer a spanner.  Check out this, from Claud Butler:

Like Raleigh's tool, the Claud Butler spanner has a hooked end for a bottom bracket lock ring.  I am guessing that the
hex side of the wrench fit the bottom bracket cup--or, possibly, the headset.  In the 1960s--when, it seems, the tool in the photo was made--if a customer bought a frame, it was as often as not supplied with those components.

Claud Butler is long gone, and bikes under his name, and Holdsworth, have been made by other British bicycle manufacturers for some time.  CB also offers a line of tools similar to those of other bike manufacturers, but when Claud was still alive, they had their own discrete line, which were probably made by Cyclo or some other Birmingham bike parts company.

A Prewar Anglo Continental

After yesterday's serious post, I thought I'd give my dear readers a bit of relief.  Specifically, I'm going to offer something I assume most of you like:  bike porn.

Specifically, I'm offering up bike elderporn.  Here is a 1939 Claud Butler Anglo Continental bike:

The bike was refinished but, from what I've gathered in my research, it now looks something like it would've looked the day it left CB's shop.

All of the components are period-correct.  I wondered about the Bluemels fenders, but a bit of research showed that they were making plastic (celluloid) fenders (mudguards) and flaps, side guards, handlebar coverings and gear cases as early as 1908.  They also made a pump with a press-fit nozzle (like Silca or pre-HPX Zefal) that eliminated the need for a connection that needed to be screwed onto the valve.

Everything on the bike is British, with the exception of the French-made Rigida alloy rims.  One part I find truly interesting is the Lauterwasser bars.  To me, they look like inverted North Road bars with more drop--which, I would expect, would make them more appropriate for a "path racer" than North Road or moustache bars.  A few years ago, Soma introduced a bar with the same name.  It seems to have less drop, but a little bit more of a forward bend, than the original Lauterwasser.

This bike would be quite the conversation-starter, wouldn't it?


 

A Good Bike Mystery

While I was riding yesterday afternoon, this bike caught my eye:

If you've been following this blog, you know my favorite color is purple, followed by certain shades of green and certain shades of blue.  Well, that bike is one of those certain shades of green. But somehow I knew it wasn't the only reason to look at it.

Clarks of Harrow.  Hmm, I've never seen that name on a bike before.  Obviously, it wasn't made by them.  But a close-up look provided me with some possible clues:

 

 

 

The lamp bracket on the front fork is almost a dead-giveaway that the bike was made in Great Britain for the British market.  Another clue to the English nature is this:

Flat-plate wraparound seat stay caps were used almost exclusively by bike makers in Blighty.  After establishing with near-certainty that it is indeed a British bike, I wondered who might have built it.

One possible clue lies here:

The lug, while fairly simple, seems to have been scalloped to a point in the manner of another English maker:

This 1966 Witcomb L'Avenir shows a lug style it often used during the 1960's and '70's.  Then again, so did a number of other British builders, including Holdsworth and Claud Butler.  I don't think Mercian ever used such a lug shape, and I simply can't imagine Hetchins having employed it.

In brief, it was a pretty nice bike that caught my eye. About the only components that looked original were the seatpost (I couldn't see an identifying mark) and Campagnolo steel headset.  The rest of the parts included a Velo Orange crankset, new Dia Compe 610 brakes, Shimano Tiagra derailleurs and Tiagra hubs laced to Sun M-13 rims and shod with Continental Gatorskin tires.

Another Forerunner To A Shimano "Innovation"

For today's post, I'm going to engage in a bit of bike geekery, as I did in yesterday's post.  Fear not:  This will not be a regular feature of Midlife Cycling.  At least, I don't intend it to be.

As I did in yesterday's post, I'm going to write about a long-forgotten component that featured a design used in later, more successful (at least commercially) bike parts.

From the 1920's until the 1970's, many British bikes featured Williams cranks, chanrings and bottom brackets.  That is not surprising when you consider that those parts were, like the bikes, made in England.  

As Steve Griffiths notes in "Classic Lightweights," Williams has been unfairly judged on the basis of its lowest-quality--and, unfortunately, most commonly-used--model, the C34.  It was a cottered steel crankset, and the arms (or spider) onto which the chainrings mounted was swaged (forced).  Willliams also make much nicer models,including some of those thin,elegant cranks you see on British bikes from the 1960's and earlier.  

But their best crankset--and the only cotterless crankset made in any significant quantity in England--was the AB 77. I have seen one of them in my entire life: on a Claud Butler that came into the first shop in which I worked.  

The AB77 was actually quite nice:  the quality of the materials, machining and finish were high.  It had the same chainring design as the TA Cyclotouriste, Stronglight 49D and the Nervar crank that aped them.  That meant the AB77, like those other cranks, could be set up as a road double with a 42 tooth small chainring  or as a triple with a 26-tooth inner ring.  

But the most interesting part of the AB77 was its bottom bracket.  Presaging a trend by two decades, its axle had a splined rather than square end.  In other words, it was a proto-Octalink or ISIS bottom bracket.  

Unfortunately, that bottom bracket was its fatal flaw.  During the period when the AB77 was produced (1962-mid 1970's), only one other crank had such a design.  It was made by Gnutti in Italy and its splines were of a different pattern from Williams', so the two could not be interchanged.  That was especially unfortunate for Williams, because the bottom bracket, which was made by T.D.C. (once a major manufacturer or headsets and freewheels), didn't last very long. 

When Shimano decided to resurrect this long-forgotten idea during the 1990's, it made the splines broader, which was supposed to increase the stiffness as well as the lifespan of the bottom bracket.  However, they, like their TDC/Williams predecessor, wore out quickly.  The problem with the Shimano splined brackets--and the similar, though not interchangeable, ISIS-pattern bottom brackets made by other companies--had narrower axles and smaller bearings than their square-ended counterparts.  Interestingly, Shimano's Octalink and other companies' ISIS bottom brackets had an even shorter run--not much more than half a decade--than the ones from TDC/Williams.  

A few years after Williams ceased production of the AB77, they were taken over by Nicklin,one of their former competitors, which offered only the C34 and a couple of other low-priced models that were fitted to mass-market bikes from Raleigh, Dawes and other manufacturers.  As production of such bikes ended, so did most of the British cycle-component industry, including Nicklin/Williams.