Ged117 

I wonder which year they stopped paying for the oil port. My '79 has one, and the original stopper in good condition. I don't think the hub has ever been touched - the bike sat locked to a post for years, and before that who knows. The hub is dry as a bone inside. I'm curious to see how my '50 AG and '53 FW compare in running feel to the '79 AW.

3speedslow

nlerner

Picked up this Moto Grand Record frameset this weekend and am thinking of a possible IGH conversion (and maybe 650B?). The paint is original.

paulb_in_bkln

If you've seen my just finished Peugeot mixte conversion you can guess I'm 100% supportive.

paulb_in_bkln

You could have a point. Maybe it's time to buy a better quality toolbox. I won't turn up my nose at any coffee, and I don't think Maxwell House is bad at all, but for reasons I won't go into I buy World Market coffee. At 24 oz for $10 the price is good and as it's whole bean it's fresh.

3speedslow

gster

Very nice details, lugs on that bike.
I'm not a derailleur guy, but I am interested in the components.

Dan Burkhart 

I remember reading somewhere that the pinions were sintered, not cast.Entirely different process.

nlerner

Probably upright/North Roads or the like. I have a bunch of options. But I also have a bunch of bikes already set up that way!

nlerner

I appreciate the support! I also did that conversion on a Peugeot back in the fall:



That one has 590mm/EA3 wheels. I fitted the Moto with a 650B/584mm x 38mm wheelset, and there's oodles of clearance. It would take 42mm tires no problem. What is a problem, however, is the rear brake reach needed is about 83mm. I'll likely try it with a Weinmann 750 brake and a pair of those offset pads for a bit more reach.

SpeedofLite 

I wandered into a northern Indiana Craigslist last night and saw what I thought was the bike I rode to destruction in 1968-69, a red Columbia Sports III. But no, the bike listed is called a Huffy Sportsman III (photo below).

The pictured bike looks exactly as I remember my Columbia, including indexed throttle shifter, white tail on rear fender, and red/white vinyl seat. While looking for information about either my Columbia Sports III or the Huffy Sportsman III, I thought it odd that both companies were manufacturers and competitors and so I didn't think one would make the bike for the other to sell. I didn't find an answer to why these bikes by different manufacturers looked identical, but I did stumble into a CABE thread that featured a 1964 Raleigh-built Huffy Sportsman (no "III" in the model name) that had similar two-tone seats and throttle shifter. One poster in the thread implied the Raleigh Company owned Huffy, but a Huffy bicycle wiki implied it was the other way around (at least to the extent I could understand the various name changes and re-orgs). I also learned in the CABE thread about a beloved Raleigh 3-speed model called Sports, a seemingly higher quality bike than the Huffy and Columbia with a classic handlebar mounted thumb-shifter.

Can anyone provide some insight into the existence of these mid-to-late 1960s 3-speed bikes (all with "Sports" and two with "III" in the model name), including any manufacturer relationships among Raleigh, Huffy, and Columbia?
It's buggin' me. Thanks.

paulb_in_bkln

I used 700c wheels so brake reach wasn't an issue. But from its forged chrome dropouts I guess your Pug is a more expensive frame with tighter clearances? We'll see if I want to spruce mine up with details like your quick release cable stops. What crankset is that? Also does that frame use the skinny seatpost?

I began the project to vindicate an idea I had, which I described in probably my first post here, that the 10-speed fever of the early seventies was kind of silly, that the mass-market French bikes so in vogue then were not fundamentally so different from the Raleigh Sports whose popularity preceded them. Now I'm not so sure. The converted Peugeot seems to me to feel a bit different than a Raleigh. But handlebars, wheels, and tires make so much difference...

BigChief 

Still, even back then, gear cutting machines were almost fully automated. The cost savings would have been tiny. The whole notion of using sintered gears in a bicycle drivetrain is questionable in my mind. Especially if they had been machining the same part for 50 years and it was proven to be reliable. To me it's a lot like deciding to put a cover over the shifter and then making it out of brittle plastic that cracked when you tightened the mounting bolt. Strange that such poor ideas were put into practice by such a well established, experienced company.

clubman 

Your Huffy looks like an outlier. It appears to be a Raleigh made frame with the exception of the one piece crank, which is incompatible with Raleigh bottom brackets. Maybe someone else could chime in. Most 64/65 Sturmey Archer drive trains came with the twist grip but they proved to be less reliable and by 66 most bikes were fitted with triggers again. Huffy and Raleigh were always separate companies. Raleigh sold their ubiquitous Sports frames to many department stores and other bike companies around the world in big numbers to be rebranded as whatever they customer wanted.

The gear cable is broken, you can see the original cable pulley behind the chainwheel. I'm now thinking that perhaps that frame is a Huffy made copy of a Raleigh Sports. Things just look a little different and without close-ups, it's hard to tell. The position of the rear mudguard mounts looks a little high.

gster

A Few Nice Items
These parts arrived yesterday from Hoop Rider.

A vintage Dunlop Westwood rim.
A set of lever bars
A box of NOS rear brake cables
A Sturmey Archer front spindle
Nine NOS cable clips
A NOS GBaluminum stem
Slight problem with the rim as it was listed as a 36H and is in
reality a 40H.......
I was planning on building a new front wheel for the Hercules
but may have to harvest from another bike..

Original wheel may have to do until a suitable replacement is found.

SpeedofLite 

Thanks for your input clubman. I appreciate your time.

I could see decals on the black Huffy Sportsman in the CABE thread that indicated that particular bike was English made, but I can't see the decals well enough on this one. I guess I'm still confused as to whether Huffy and Columbia made these bikes at all, or maybe just some were Raleigh-made. It makes sense to me if Raleigh and Huffy had an organizational relationship under one company or the other, or both under an umbrella company. The Columbia story is less clear to me. This whole bike manufacturer/ brand/ model/year thing seems much more complex than I ever thought it was. It does seem to me though that 3-speed lightweights were a nice market that bike companies all wanted a piece of in the 1960s.

Ged117 

That's why I am so keen on my Peugeot AO8 IGH four speed project. I think it is going to make for a tidy-looking, fun to ride commuter. The Peugeot red is just icing on my cake since I had a Peugeot in university with North Roads in the same shade of red, or thereabouts. I wish I still had that frame, it had original fenders and original north road style bars, and I am not sure which type of Peugeot it was now. I haven't seen such an example since.

clubman 

Yeah there's always a bit of sleuthing to be done. Here's a pic from The Headbadge and although it's a late model version, you can see how the rear mudguards attach at a point almost level with the rear axle. This is one of the easiest ways to spot a Raleigh. Your Huffy connects well above the axle.

BigChief 

This project is looking great. 40/32H Westwood rims are almost always the major problem with the big roadsters. Originals tend to be rusted away and finding good replacements is not easy. The 40H rear rim looks good. You're half the way there.

carfreefamily

Is this the kind of thing one can expect when one starts riding a vintage 3-speed? Someone here at the college where I work came by and said, "I hear you like old London bicycles. I have a Raleigh Hercules I could let you have real cheap." Real cheap to him is $50. To me, real cheap has always meant $25 or less. Maybe I can talk him down. It sounds like a mess - it needs a paint job, the brake levers have been painted, no fenders. Still, I have trouble fighting the urge to make old three speeds that are going unridden rideable. I told him I would take a look at it.

gster

I'm hooking up the brake linkages today..
I had no idea how complicated it is.
Everything is placed on the frame but not tightened up yet.
I have a good set of pads for this one.
Also, I'm going to try compressing the front fender back into shape.

browngw 

To enlarge the radius you normally squeeze the sides of the fender inwards which looks like what you need . If you were to pull the edges outward the radius would decrease and the ends would be even closer to the tire. It is a lesson I learned many years ago and seldom fails. It takes very little movement to bring it back.

gster

Good tip!

BigChief 

Wow, this is coming along beautifully. Good chainring choice. These are very similar to the ones I see in 1930s Hercules catalog pictures. Very nice you found one without the Sir Raleigh stamp on the crank to give it away. You never mentioned if there was any sign on an attached head badge. Lloyds makes an exact transfer of that period Herc head badge. Many English bikes from the 30s seem to have transfers instead of an attached badge. In either case, it would look great on this bike. They also have the seat tube transfer.
https://h-lloyd-cycles.myshopify.com...-head-transfer

gster

It would appear to have had a transfer badge.
Thanks for that link.
I will check it out.