Where are the Brit Bikes?

[bonj2]

educated[/i].

 

[youngoldbloke]

We appear to be suffering from short term memory loss here. When I was a kid (cotter pin days), a local bike builder may have provided a nice Reynolds 531 double butted frame with fancy lugs or lugless (as I preferred), but we couldn't wait to get hold Cinelli bars, Campag gears and Weimann 500s. I don't recall any decent British groupsets back then , as now. Guess we're just crap a mass production.

I think you've got it spot on. My first 'proper' bike was built on a Stallard frame (remember them Randochap), but virtually everything on that frame - other than the Brooks saddle (and aren't Brooks now Italian owned?) was Italiian (mostly Campag) or French. Most of the other good bikes around were the same. Maybe GB was the only UK maker of components that was considered otherwise. The British bicycle industry has gone the way of much of UK industry - motorcycles, cars, electronics etc, but there are still a number of independant frame makers out there, catering to a relatively small group of enthusiasts.

 

[Amanda P]

Are Orbit still going? Mrs Uncle Phil has an Orbit, boldly labelled "HANDBUILT IN SHEFFIELD".

Of course, it has Taiwanese gears, French or Dutch rims, Swiss spokes, Italian handlebars....

 

[swee'pea99]

alright, to escape from the nitpicking of thedifference between education and intelligence, developed countries don't have much factory output because their population is more educated.

'nitpicking'?

Your new revised position, by the by, is also a crock of BS.

 

[Hont]

Saracen is I think still a UK brand, albeit the bike was built in Eastern Europe.

I have a Saracen road bike and it says "designed in Great Britain" on it. Clearly not built in the UK, though, otherwise they'd mention it.

 

[Randochap]

My first 'proper' bike was built on a Stallard frame (remember them Randochap)

I sure do! I hung out at Percy's shop before I could see over the counter! Mick was my local hero. He put us kids through the paces on Friday night's, on the way to the Aldersley track, and gave me my first experience of suffering on the bike!

I dreamed of one day owning a Stallard custom frame.

Here's serendipity: A couple of years ago, our eldest club member, an octogenarian ex-pat from London, who had told me previously he once owned a Stallard, was culling his old Kodachromes, when came across something he thought would interest me: A photo of Mick Stallard he'd taken winning the cyclocross nationals in Calais, 1964.

I now have a scan of my childhood mentor taken the very year he became the toast of the town and my tormentor on the bike! Cool, huh?

 

[Fab Foodie]

I have a Holdsworth.
I have an Evans/Saracen 531 MTB
I owned a Nivachrome Omega
I have a British Eagle restoration project.

All British built.

I also have a Giant TCR1

 

[asterix]

I have a British Eagle restoration project.

Would that be a 'Touristique'? As mentioned above I have a 1987 British Eagle but it's being updated as well as renovated. Very pleasant bike to ride IMO.

The new wheels (courtesy of Spa Cycles) are in place, tomorrow it gets the shifters, then the drive stuff; for the moment I'm sticking to the Stronglight double. No brakes yet, it had Modolo frog-leg style but I want something more adjustable. Tektro's won't do because the front clearance is too narrow so maybe Avids.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Would that be a 'Touristique'? As mentioned above I have a 1987 British Eagle but it's being updated as well as renovated. Very pleasant bike to ride IMO.

The new wheels (courtesy of Spa Cycles) are in place, tomorrow it gets the shifters, then the drive stuff; for the moment I'm sticking to the Stronglight double. No brakes yet, it had Modolo frog-leg style but I want something more adjustable. Tektro's won't do because the front clearance is too narrow so maybe Avids.

Yep!
Needs re-spraying. There are a few around, andyoxon rides one.
Brakes are probably re-usable, drive-train needs complete replacing (I had to cut the cranks off!), will go with DT shifters, use winter wheels off TCR (CXP22's on Ultegra + Krylions), New Brooks, Look pedals yee-haa.
Nice Touristique restoration job here...

http://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=17.1410

 

[asterix]

Thanks for the very interesting link. Lee has made a fantastic job of it! Mine will be plainer although Ellis Briggs have done me a fine re-paint as requested. I'm looking forward to the re-launch very soon!

 

[Fab Foodie]

Thanks for the very interesting link. Lee has made a fantastic job of it! Mine will be plainer although Ellis Briggs have done me a fine re-paint as requested. I'm looking forward to the re-launch very soon!

I've never ridden mine, I hauled it away from the tip. It's kinda gunmetal coloured with knackered plastic stickers. I think I'll use Mercian, but go for something plain... (though |I might enquire about a LEE stylee job as well, it's good isn't it? Too many tourers/audaxy bikes are plainish, I might do something similar in another color, say light blue, who knows... It needs to go with my bright red Karrimor panniers.
Colour card!
http://www.merciancycles.co.uk/finishes.asp

Anybody got any good colour scheme suggestions?

 

[Black Sheep]

Quoting Randochaps' OP:
Also, the last time I was in the UK, I noticed how many people were gallumphing around on the road on full-suspension MTBs. Where were all the beautiful road bikes of my youth?

Where are all the road bikes? - drop bar or flat - or hybrids? I took a ride along the Bristol Bath cycle path last weekend, and on that bank holiday afternoon, of the 100s of bikes that passed I saw only half a dozen or so 'proper' road bikes (like my own!), and not many more flat bars or hybrids. The vast majority appeared to be 'MTBs' , mostly of the BSO variety,

biking about in coventry today, most of the bikes i saw were drop bar road bikes except for a couple of city bikes (almost a modern version of the ladies looped frame kind)

was quite amusing overtaking them all

 

[jay clock]

The original posting seems to assume that anyone would like the aesthetics of the bikes he showed. I simply don't and am not going to spend a fortune on something like a Mercian which seems to be stylistic modelled on the horse drawn caravan in the Enid Blyton books. As an idea, compare this http://www.gypsyhorsesource.com/othersaleitems/wagon-7-medium.jpg
with this
http://www.classiclightweights.co.uk/bikes/mercian-avt5.jpg
for example . My tourer is a Koga Miyata World Traveller - just my preference in style and look, and it works well too. And if anyone tries the old "repairing steel frames in Timbuktoo" story, would you really want your super alloy special steel frame hacked about by an African blacksmith?

 

[bonj2]

now you mention it i can see the similarity...it's all the swirly bits

 

[asterix]

The original posting seems to assume that anyone would like the aesthetics of the bikes he showed. I simply don't and am not going to spend a fortune on something like a Mercian which seems to be stylistic modelled on the horse drawn caravan in the Enid Blyton books. As an idea, compare this http://www.gypsyhorsesource.com/othersaleitems/wagon-7-medium.jpg
with this
http://www.classiclightweights.co.uk/bikes/mercian-avt5.jpg
for example . My tourer is a Koga Miyata World Traveller - just my preference in style and look, and it works well too. And if anyone tries the old "repairing steel frames in Timbuktoo" story, would you really want your super alloy special steel frame hacked about by an African blacksmith?

Jayclock, you're being a bit of a politician here I think, picking out all the extremes of the argument in an attempt to rubbish it.

It's not a matter of fancy fretted lugs, in fact my steel Roberts is a lug-free compact frame and the others have simple modern lugs. I too, find fretted lugs a little over-stated!

If you prefer your version of a tourer, I prefer mine:

not least because it can and has been repaired (replaced top tube) and modified with added/moved braze-ons but also because it is an elegant and tough bike.

To me the oversized tubes essential to give aluminium frames strength is unattractive and unnecessary when it is possible to get a steel frame better suited for the purpose. But that of course is my opinion.