The Stable

Ellis Briggs Allrounder, 1953



Headset - Tange Ritzy
Chainset, front and rear derailleurs and shifters - Shimano 600 Ex Arabesque
Pedals - Suntour Superbe
Brakes - Shimano Dura Ace
Wheels - Unbranded rims on Lambert hubs
Saddle - Brooks Professional
Stem and Seatpost - SR Laprade

Tom Crowther Time Trial - 1979

First Build (Part Two)

So, it's taken me so long to get around to posting stuff on here that the first build has been built, ridden, rusted, dismantled and was just about to go off to the powder coaters when I found a much much nicer frame (complete bike in fact) to replace it and so it's languishing on the workshop floor 'til I get round to carting off to the tip.

The Budget Bike

So, I'm not quite ready, being that cycling's a new hobby and all that, to make that leap and spend decent money on that really special vintage road bike. I'm not sure what decent money is nor sure which really special vintage road bike to get but mainly I don't feel that with only one Spring under my belt, the time is right to splash out so for the time being, I'll be sticking with my perfectly adequate budget bikes; but there's a problem.

I should be thinking, 'hey, all that money I've saved by buying a cheap bike on ebay and lavishing it with tender loving care and a few cans of spray paint instead of shiny new components with actual brand names on them, could be spent on shiny new components with brand names on them but here lies the problem. When you're bike's that cheap, any decent major component would likely cost more than the bike and that just seems wrong. So I look to accessories like clothes or shoes or vintage French bottle cages and the same thought occurs.

Wow! Cool shoes! They must have set you back a bit. Yep, three times the price of the bike actually.

My wife has an interesting outlook on purchase trade-offs. She buys a whole load of stuff from Boden, tries it on, decides that either the stuff doesn't fit or she doesn't like it, sends it back, gets a refund, goes shopping, spends a similar amount on one item and when I involuntarily raise an eyebrow says, 'yes, but what about all that money I just got back from Boden?'

I could apply the same logic. Buy the shoes, send them back, get a refund, put the money towards a new bike until I've got enough to buy a bike expensive enough to justify having the shoes. Sorted! But I don't.

Instead, I content myself with looking at photos of these desirable items and trying to feel satisfied with what I've got. The bike would most likely get stolen anyway. At least no one would steal the shoes off my feet unless of course I lived in London.

Drinking and Riding

Too much time spent trawling the internet looking at photos of beautiful bikes can mean only thing. A severe case of bike envy and for me that applies to every last detail. So, I saw this photo of a handlebar mounted bottle cage with aluminium bottle and cork stopper and set about tracking one down. How much? You cannot be serious. So here's my version on a budget.

Step 1.
I'm sure this breaks some mechanical rule and would have purists getting in a right kerfuffle but I've done it and for the time being, it seemed to work. I attached a single bottle cage by putting the bolt that holds the handlebars on, through a spare hole in the cage. There! I've admitted to it. There was a fair amount of packing out went on but in the end, the cage seems to be steady and the handlebars don't move. The cage is an alloy 'Clarks' cage - under £5 inc. shipping from ebay. I also wrapped the front edge with some twine to stop the bottle rattling

Step 2.

Get the antique look bottle with a cheapo aluminium bottle, again from ebay (£3.97 inc. shipping). This one had a layer of silver paint which I removed with a combination of stripper and fine wet and dry paper, leaving a scuffed up vintage finish.

Step 3.

Tapered corks are available in just about every size. Choose one to fit snugly in the opening. Drill a hole through the middle. I put a short length of aluminium tube in and ran clear plastic pipe through it to use as a drinking straw.

No more fiddling with bottle cages while trying to avoid potholes.

Update: So, after a couple of 25 mile rides, I've come to the conclusion that one small bottle isn't enough and so it's either a clamp-on cage on the down tube (the bike doesn't have bottle cage braze-ons) or an adapted handlebar mounted double cage. Watch this space for a revolutionary new design.

Headgear

There appear to be two types of helmet on the market. Ones that make you look like and alien and ones that belong on a teenage skater dude. I'm some years past fitting the latter category even if I wanted to. I wasn't as if I was worried by the strange sideways glances I knew I'd get from other riders by not conforming so I set about finding an alternative to the design that has come to dominate the market but every time I spotted something that might fit the bill (if not my head) it appeared that it hadn't got past concept stage or even if it had, they weren't exactly widely available, at least not in any of my local bike shops. After all, don't you need to try a helmet on? Especially if you're planning on parting with a sizeable amount of cash and still risk looking like a buffoon. In the end, like the styling of my bikes and the rest of my cycle fashion choices, I looked to the halcyon days of cycling where the cap was king of headgear. But what about the hairnet? It appears fleetingly in archive footage and photos from the fifties onwards, or at least until someone came up with a lightweight construction which might also go some way towards saving your life. There weren't many available (surprise, surprise) but I managed to find this little 'new old stock' number on ebay. Then I spotted that some particularly fashion (and safety) conscious pros from the past had dabbled with a combination of the two! A fashion double whammy. Not exactly the protection afforded by modern helmet technology but very cool. Obviously,
one man's cool is another's lunacy and my chosen combination is certainly a head turner, likely for all the wrong reasons.

Listen, I'm not advocating everyone dispensing with helmets (actually, I am) but until someone comes up with an alternative that fits my exacting requirements, I'll be sticking with these. What's more, a collection of caps is a lot more affordable than a collection of helmets.

First Build (Part One)

Inspired by an article asking whether it was possible to build up a classic vintage road bike for under £1,000, I embarked on my first build, armed with an impressive arsenal of tools (unfortunately few of them bike specific) and with a mission to complete my bike for substantially less than that.

The finished build. Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pre-build photos.

My first step was to replace the word 'classic' with 'vintage' thereby knocking off at least one zero from the total. After all, my new found obsession with cycling had been fed thus far, and more than adequately by a 1982 Raleigh Royal bought for £42 on ebay and I figured that if I was one day to own that dream bike, I'd better begin a bit lower down. With this in mind, I logged onto ebay and put a watch on anything cheap that didn't look beyond repair. After a couple of near misses, I became the proud owner of a 23" Bernard Dangre. Bernard Who? I hear you ask. The paucity of information available told me that it was French which I could have guessed and almost certainly not a classic. Most importantly, it had very little rust, two straight looking wheels, two nearly new tyres and appeared to be generally in decent working order. Sticking with my mission to keep the price as low as possible, I decided to keep as many usable components as possible and stripped the frame.

The colour scheme would be pale blue with chocolate brown bar tape (more on that later) and no decals. Even if Bernard Dangre decals had been readily available, would I really want to identify my cheap bike as such. Better to keep them guessing, I say.

I also decided that it would have a single gear because, well. because my Raleigh had twelve and I wanted something different, no other reason. At this point I hadn't really engaged with the whole fixed versus freewheel thing but a quick look at youtube footage of teenagers doing skid stops on fixies convinced me I'd be safer with a freewheel.

First purchase: Dicta 18 tooth freewheel - £7.44 inc. shipping.

Did I mention that this bike is French. No sooner had I clicked Buy It Now than some alarm bells rang. Hadn't I read something somewhere about French threading being different to everyone else for no good reason. Would my freewheel fit? I polished up the rims and hubs and there it was, the words I'd been dreading. "Made in France." There'd be a way round it. Maybe some thread lock or something similar but the next task was to remove the cassette with no tools. Youtube came in handy again and armed with a large hammer, a nail punch and a bench vice I set about the rear wheel with gusto, occasionally, referring to ebay to see how much a new one would cost when I'd ruined it. Success! The cassette came off and apart at the same time and I watched the bearings roll across the floor thinking, 'they might come in handy for something.'

What's left of the cassette. Not easy to put back together, apparently!