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.

The D.I.R.T. On This Derailleur

I've found a derailleur that not even Michael Sweatman, the author of Disraeligears, has.  At least it's not in the "A Riot of Colour" section of his website.

If I'd found the derailleur in the photo about fifteen years ago--when they were, most likely, last made--I might've installed it on my Voodoo Wazoo.  After all, that bike was orange and had a few green parts!

The Sachs D.I.R.T. derailleur series was, as its name indicates, intended for mountain bikes.  During the early 1980's, Sachs--a German company known mainly for its coaster brake- and internally geared-hubs--bought French derailleur maker Huret, along with Maillard, a Gallic concern that manufactured hubs (including the well-conceived but poorly-executed Helicomatic), freewheels, pedals and other components, sometimes under the "Normandy" and "Atom" brands.  Later in the decade, Sachs was absorbed into SRAM but continued to make its derailleurs in France under their own name.  

The D.I.R.T. series, along with the company's Quartz and Success road changers, were among the last derailleurs produced on French soil.  (According to Frank Berto in The Dancing Chain, the Mavic Mektronic was probably the last.)  They, and other Sachs derailleurs, were actually well-designed and -made.  But Sachs never developed an integrated drive train group and thus never competed with the Shimano juggernaut.

Now that I think of it, the derailleur in the photos wouldn't look bad on the bike I wrote about yesterday!

Riding A Bend

Back when I was racing, I, like many of my peers in the peloton (and other cyclists who had racing fantasies) judged bikes and components mainly on one trait: stiffness.

This was especially true of frames and, specifically, the rear triangle.  Any flexing, we thought, wasted our energies and robbed us of precious seconds.  

Of course, a bike that rides like a jackhammer can subvert one's ambitions just as much as a "wet noodle".  After all, if you're getting bounced around, all of that vibration can wear on you, no matter how tightly-put together you are.  

I was thinking about that when I came across a bike none of us would have gotten anywhere near:

A completely-bendable frame.  It makes me think of a joke I heard about an all-rubber suspension bridge.  If nothing else, the bike solves the problem of how to lock up both wheels when you're parked in a high-theft area.

The frame flops loose with the flick of a lever.  I wonder whether there's any way to accidentally jar the lever while riding.  I take that back:  If I were riding the bike, I don't think I'd want to find out!