Things happen!

Christmas and New Year is a good time to be my old bike.

The rear derailleur purchased from ebay arrived and is in fine condition. The jockey wheels will need replacing sooner or later but the chain spins fine on them at the moment.

Yesterday I purchased a Wipperman Connex 800 chain and its link size of 1/2" x 3/32" seems to fit well. The total chain length is almost spot on too so I've mounted it without removing any links, it will stay this way until this causes an issue.

The headset required a 7mm allen key which is apparently an odd size. Bunnings don't stock these so head straight to Repco if you don't want to waste 30mins wandering the aisles opening every socket and hex head set you come across.

So anyway, with a chain and rear derailleur I'm actually able to ride the bike around. And it is amazing! Quiet and rigid, not too big for me and an entirely different riding position to what I'm used to (a mountain bike). Also it is extremely dangerous as I don't have a brake and have been using my feet on the road to stop it. I guess it is kind of like an even more dangerous fixed gear bike.

Here she is with a front brake I was testing.

To Do
Buy:
-Nuovo Record front derailleur
-Nuovo Record shifters
-Mafac brake levers
-Brake and gear cable
-White bar tape

Do:
-Glue tubular tires on (apparently a long long process)
-bolt everything else on
-RIDE IT. Get it really dirty and covered in sweat.

Dating parts

Dating all of the components will be an ongoing process. Whilst I have no desire to make the bike truly period correct, I do want to make sure I'm within ±5 years with my replacement components. More than that though I'm just curious as to when the parts were made, what parts are original and why ebay replacements cost so much.

What I know so far.
Brakes
Mafac Dual Forge, Centre Pull.
Classic Lightweights suggest they are mid-late-60s as they are stamped "Dual Forge" and not "Racer" as the later models were.

Cranks
Sugino Mighty Competition
Everything I've read suggests these are late 70s to early 80s

...and that is it.

All comments and suggestions are welcome.

This week I have mostly been: cleaning tubular glue

It is not necessary to remove old tubular glue unless it is old, uneven or cracked. I think this ancient adhesive is probably 3/3 there.


Paint thinner is one way to remove the old glue, however, I wouldn't trust myself with paint thinner anywhere near the timber in or around our house so I chose steel wool and 2 episodes of Top Gear instead.


I was pleased with the results and although it isn't a mirror finish my arms were sore and the surface will only be glued anyway.

Where all of my information has come from so far

Cykel Hobby was a great resource when I was looking for a bike back in Sweden. Kjell was also extremely helpful when I emailed asking some questions. Be aware most of the site is in Swedish but there is a great english run down of Swedish bike history that I will most likely plagiarise without shame from now on.

Mad Men would be proud

Crescent Ads from the 70s

The bike in 2007

Here is the bike as it arrived in 2007.

From Blog

A little history...

The bike was purchased in May 2007 from Mjölby, Sweden. I was lucky to get it out of Mjölby let alone back to Australia as the Östgötatrafiken (local train company) wouldn't allow me to take the bike on board. Thankfully, the man that I had purchased it from kindly drove me the hour long trip back to my flat. He said he was happy to see the bike going to Australia to be restored; I was happy to not have to dink my girlfriend 70kms on flat tires.

I had to pack the bike into a box to travel with me back home to Australia so I decided to strip as much of the weight from it as I could. The chain went, as did the bar tape (at least 30grams saved there!). At the time I had decided to turn the bike into a fixed gear machine so I also did the unthinkable and simply threw out the Nuovo Record derailleurs and shift levers. I learned a very valuable lesson there about checking the value of bike components.

On my return to Melbourne most people I asked suggested I attempt to restore the bike to original condition rather than fix it. Combine this with the realisation that in a big city fixed gear cycling was really quite trendy (unlike myself) and it was settled, I was going to have to restore it.

The hope is that this site can serve as an information and image repository for myself and an invaluable source for the many millions of non swedish speakers out there restoring a 1970s Swedish racing bike.