sced

I think that there are a lot of Holdsworths out there, but didn't see a thread dedicated to this hallowed marque....sooo here's your chance to show off that beauty!

Two months ago I got mine back on the road after many years of languishing in the back of the garage, and have finally taken it's picture. It's a custom 1973 Super Mistral Fastback, a Christmas present from mom and dad.


I took this bike apart in Jan 2020 for professional repairs and painting. The serial number on the fork is 69559

mudboy

My mentor rode a black Holdsworth Special. I'd love to find one just like it; he passed away and his son has the bike

Bianchigirll 

very nice looking. in one of the shops where I worked there were two mid '80s frames on the wall. after a few years of no interest the owner offer me (not that I hadn't ask hundred of times) one to use, but alas neither was s good fit. very nice 531 bikes though

Oldpeddaller

I've posted my 1970 Holdsworth Mistral here before:

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My current C&V project is a 1954 Holdsworth Typhoon special built frame kindly donated by Forum member Elias_Bland from South East London. The frame was damaged and it's taken me over a month of (literally) wrestling with it to sort out that kinked chain stay! The stays are now re-enamelled and I'm in the process of assembling the bike - will post pics when completed. Apologies for the messy workshop - it's always like that.

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Another grand old classic saved from the landfill site!

jebensch

We've never met, but I can tell it's too tall for you, Ed. Send it North, please.

Beauty. Very cool.

unworthy1

I'll get pics of my 2 posted in a couple days (weather permitting) but meanwhile...
Oldpeddler: can you give us the serial numbers from your '70 Mistral (and for the Typhoon, too, if it's not too much to ask) that may help me with dating my Super Mistral.
Thanks,

sced

Oldpeddler, so how did you go about fixing that bent and lumpy stay, and what are your plans for the Typhoon?

sced

3 Holdsworths and counting...

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Holdsworth Jersey

https://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...=STRK:MEWAX:IT



Don't know if yall saw these on Ebay. The seller had jerseys for a lot of other classic makes for sale in a wave of parallel auctions. I won the sale in the link and will report on the quality once it arrives. Hope I don't have to diet to avoid the sausage look.

Oldpeddaller

Sure thing, unworthy1 - I can't do it straight away, it's 1am over here and my neighbours won't appreciate all the workshop alarms sounding as I open up and turn them off! I'll go out first thing in the morning. Kilgarrif's site is a good starting point for pre 1965 frames, especially in identifying if your frame is a factory or shop (built to customer spec) model. The shop numbers run in the same sequence but about ten times more frames were built in the factory every year, so that makes a difference. I had help in dating the Typhoon from another C&V member who was going to Mario Vaz finishers in London to collect his resprayed Hobbs. Mario used to work at Holdsworth and they checked the old catalogues as well. I had it down to about a 1956 shop built Typhoon, but David & Mario pegged it more closely to 1954. The Mistral was easier - I bought it used from SJS Cycles in Bridgewater, Somerset UK and they provided the manufature year!

JunkYardBike

Ha, I just posted a comment about your Super Mistral in the Roadie forum (and my guess was pretty good!) That's a great looking bike - love the fastback stays and sloping fork crown.

Oldpeddaller

"Oldpeddler, so how did you go about fixing that bent and lumpy stay, and what are your plans for the Typhoon? "

Bit of a story here - I considered having a new stay brazed in professionally, but the cost of the work and refinishing to original appearance worked out around £300. Expensive for a free frame, i haven't got that sort of spare cash - and it wouldn't be original. I decided to try to do it myself and retain the paint and transfers - it had polished up so nicely! Applying heat would destroy the paint so I tried cold setting. If it didn't work I would be no worse off. The tool I needed was a Park FFS-2 but they are £120 over here in the UK and as rare as hen's teeth!

I started by laying the frame on its side on a carpet with the top braced against my bench and used a hydraulic car jack against the bottom of the two kinks. This gave a straighter but still curvy stay (Like a Hetchins or Bates but only on one side!) and the drop outs were only slightly more level. At this point my brother in law offered for the engineers at his hydraulic company to take over. The frame was sent back weeks later untouched which was a bit of a disappointment. The message was that the tubing is so thin walled, they wouldn't want to touch it as they thought their machines would crush it flat. This was apparently decided when their head fitter picked up the frame and was surprised how light it was. Probably a good thing really though.

In the end I did it myself. I spent every spare hour for over a month often literally wrestling with the frame in a vice, using levers, wedges, steel blocks and anything else that came to hand to coax it back into shape, painfully slowly. The problem is that you have to bend it past where you want it as it springs back a bit. Then measure in three planes and discover that four hours work has made it about half a millimetre straighter! It was tempting to pick up the big hammer or fire up a gas torch but I really didn't want to damage it after so much work. Finally got the drop-outs in line, the chain stay and seat stay "straight" and the geometry checked out OK with a wheel in. The chain stay looked straight but it still had a slight downward curve of 0.5mm over a 16 inch length when measured with an engineer's straight edge and a vernier. The contour was also slightly different to the other side at the front too. At this point I was considering that it was probably "close enough", but was disappointed it wasn't perfect. I had wrapped the rest of the frame in bubble wrap to protect it while doing this.

Then my neighbour, who is a heating engineer and so works a lot with pipes lent me a pair of his tube formers - solid metal blocks with "U" shaped channels running along their length. By clamping these into my big vice with the stay between the blocks and pulling on the frame I was gradually able to work the tube back the final tiny increments required and it's now perfectly straight!

I'm not at all worried about the strength of the tube as I found out it's a lot stronger than me! Using the tube forming blocks worked out the slight bulges as well to restore the original contour, using the opposite stay as a pattern. I then used a tiny dentist's mirror and a little LED torch to look inside the stay - it's smooth, no sign of any internal distortion. I took all the paint off the chain stay and lower seat stay to check for hairline cracks or splits and they are fine, so I had only to respray those tubes in gloss black enamel over grey primer to finish the job. It's now finished and looks great.

I've started the build using spare parts I have to hand or was given. I clipped in a pair of 700C touring wheels to support it while building but may change these for Mavic or Weinmann clinchers on Maillard High Flange hubs. TTT Eddy Merckx 'Paris Roubaix' bars with internal brake cable tunnels on a Cinelli stem. Shimano Exage hooded aero levers. Simplex 'Retro friction' DT shifters, Suntour rear mech, Shimano 600 front, Yaban chain, San Marco Rolls saddle on Kalin seatpost, Stronglight 300 left crank, unknown all alloy chainset 42T 52T, 7 speed screw on or 8 speed cassette freewheel (depends on final wheel choice and the sideways range of the rear mech), TA bottle cage, Lyotard pedals with toeclips & straps, silver plastic full mudguards, red bar tape. The query at the moment is the brake callipers. With 700C wheels the brake drop is substantial and the only brakes I have that will reach properly are Weinmann 750 centre-pulls. I'm hopeful that with decent pads and the aero levers these will work well, otherwise I'll be on the look out for something else, probably Tektro deep drop dual pivots with nut-on fixings?

I'm grateful to all the Forum Members and friends who have contributed parts and encouragement to this build. Elias_Bland for the frame and forks, Viscount for the brake levers, callipers and rear mech, Bikingbritinmex for his help with research, my sister in law's father John for the stem and many other bits, my neighbour Eric for the loan of his tube formers, my other neighbour Russ for a shed load of discarded bike parts from his old house. I'll post finished photos when it's complete and I've taken my first ride! Worth the effort? Definitely! I'd hate to think of this lovely frame with those incredibly slender seat stays and ornate lugs being thrown into a skip. Problem at present is time - heavy work and family commitments have caught up with me, but there's not much left to do now. Thanks for your interest.

Oldpeddaller

Hi unworthy1,

The Typhoon Serial # is 23776.

As far as I can make out the Mistral is 34386. I thought this could be missing a digit because I understood that the five digit serial numbers only went to 1965, but if this is a 'shop' model too then with only 150 or so frames made each year, the 5 digit serial numbers would have lasted a lot longer than at the factory, which produced about 1,400 frames per year. I haven't done a lot of research on this one since it has the model scroll decals and SJS Cycles are trustworthy & that's how they advertised it.

Of course, when they were busy making shiny new frames by hand and struggling to keep up with bulging order books, I don't suppose that the frame builders at Holdsworth imagined for a second that over fifty years later people like us would be trying to decipher their sequences! It probably wasn't that important at that time or even years later, while the paper sales records still existed.

Good luck!

sced

That's a great story and will be helpful to others facing a similar challenge. One always wonders how much time and money to put into a situation like this, but for many it's the journey that matters most and you've had a really good one, and created a personal treasure along the way. Those reading this thread have a treat awaiting when you show her off.

stronglight

Here are a couple of small tease photos showing my two Holdsworths. Click on the links below to view more and lager images.

One frameset was purchased in 2002, the other a year later in 2003. They were sold through eBay after each of the framesets was found by the same eBay Seller and later "rescued" stripped to bare metal and repainted.

Each had been just left in storage for perhaps some 40 years after its owner had moved on to different bikes. Two different owners, and each was the original purchaser of their frameset, bought new.

Each frameset was re-enameled (in England prior to my purchase) at the hands of the same painter, who was previously the paint shop foreman at the long closed Carlton Cycles. Then long retired and at an advanced age, he still liked to put his hand to a few worthwhile restoration projects. Not sure how well my photos reveal the paint but each is a similar deep red with gold flamboyant finish. It shimmers brightly in sunlight, but is not the coarse "candied metal flake" finish which I've seen on some bikes.

The bikes are not currently built up as strict "restorations" - although many of the components I've used were from roughly that period or just slightly later.

Great riding bikes! Neither bike was a top range model in its day, although each frameset is truly beautifully made.
More photos here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/strongl...7609583333608/



More photos here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/strongl...7620917135524/

Oldpeddaller

Bob, Your typhoon is gorgeous - love the colours and paint finish! Did you design the "Typhoon" model name decal yourself or is it a replica of an original design? It complements the style of the bike perfectly. My frame is slightly different, having been built to customer spec - mine has no pump pegs but does have a single bottle boss and Agrati rear ends with a derailleur hanger. Your Mafacs look great - I was going to fit centre-pulls as I'm using 700C rims. I adapted a side pull to (just) reach the rim this afternoon, but after seeing yours I'll probably go back to Plan "A".

Oldpeddaller

A beautiful bike - the Mistral Super Fastback is a faster handling version of the Mistral. Forum member Nuovo Record is restoring one and plans yo have an orange finish, which looking at yours I reckon will be brilliant. Yours has the "Holdsworth Team" colour scheme - pumpkin with kingfisher bands ans white lettering with no chrome and really looks the business! If one of mine ever needs a respray that's the scheme I'd go for, with white cloth tape and black Brooks Pro saddle with large copper rivets - to look just like a Team Holdsworth Professional from a distance. Thanks for showing it to us.

sced

Those bikes are pretty dazzling. I'd love to see a pic of the Typhoon in it's entirety.

I'm wondering what people think of today's bikes ride-wise and technologically versus their oldies.

In addition to the 73 Holdsworth, I have a 93 Viner with tigged, oversized nivachrome tubing, and two 07 aluminum bikes with 10spd drivetrains. The ride of the English 73 and Italian 93 steel bikes is really pretty similar, a bit harsh but with quick handling, probably due to their shorter wheelbases. The Viner is tad less noodly.

One of my family's newer bikes has a Columbus aluminum-tubed frame with a Record carbon group and the other a generic aluminum frame with a Shimano 105 drivetrain and shifters. The two aluminum bikes ride similarly to each other despite a 2x+ difference in cost, with the ride being more compliant than the old steel, probably due in part to their considerably longer wheelbases, but design and materials must play a significant role. Relative to the oldie downtube friction shifting with 6 and 7 speeds in the back, I'm not terribly impressed for the kind of riding that I do (exercise and recreation) with the brifters and extra gears. One thing that for me is a big improvement is the clipless pedals with the float (egg beaters and SPD). I had mounted the original super leggera pedals w/ toe clips on the Holdsworth and was riding it with cycling shoes having the slotted cleats. The foot position was well inboard relative to the clipless and there was essentially zero float. I'd was getting a bit of knee pain with every ride so after a few weeks the old pedals went back in the box.

Oldpeddaller

I'm wondering what people think of today's bikes ride-wise and technologically versus their oldies.

I haven't ridden the black Typhoon yet, still a little more assembly and adjustment to do. The Mistral has got better as I have gradually collected period correct parts and fitted them. It's got a longer wheelbase than your Super Mistral and I'd guess gives a softer ride. It's a perfect fit for me, which helps a lot and is my bike of choice for longer distances. Fast, smooth and responsive, good up hills but not as lightning fast on downhill corners as my own 90's Viner (Columbus SLX with carbon forks) or more modern carbon frames. The changes that made the most improvement are the tubular tyres on sprint rims, the Strada crankset and unused Campagnolo 7 speed aluminium freewheel block. The latter was a real find - in a bag of old bike "odds and ends" I bought on e-bay for under £5 from a seller who was clearing the contents of a closed bike shop! Haven't weighed it recently but it feels a LOT lighter and faster than when I first built the frame up with modern parts. Interestingly, another of my bikes with a similar 'feel' is my 1935 Claud Butler Super Velo. This is built from Reynolds 'High Manganese' butted tubing, the forerunner of 531 and Accles & Pocock 'Kronos'. The Claud has the biggest fork offset I've ever seen on a road frame, with tapered round section fork blades and it seems to float over rough surfaces. My Viner and very similar Columbus Massi Mega Team ride a bit quicker but are harsh in comparison, despite their carbon forks.

I agree about the old-style slotted shoe plates - used to use these for racing back in the early 1970's and my knees would ache a lot for a day or two after a race. No such problems with Shimano SPD's, Look or Campagnolo Scottia Record clipless pedals (although the latter weigh a ton!), but my favourite set-up is with Campagnolo Record quill pedals or similar, chromed toeclips with leather straps set fairly loose and old-style leather cycling shoes or modern lightweight narrow running shoes with plain sloes. Enough stiffness to avoid foot pain but plenty of float for my old knees.

unworthy1

I still haven't made the time to take "beauty shots" of my two, but here's my serial numbers:

Super Mistral, black with red/orange head tube and panel: 001240 (stamped on BB)
Touring, was pea-soup green, now bronze, has vertical Campy DOs, canti brake bosses: 69226 (stamped in a "vertical stack" on BB)


So does anyone have date estimates?

russdog63

I resurrected my old warhorse Holdsworth Professional for 25 more years of serious riding. It will be used as a cyclocross bike and a very fine one at that. Here are pics.









This bike is now somewhat of a mongrel but a proud mongrel with great heritage. The wheels are built from Campy Super Record 36 hole hubs laced to old Mavic MA40 700cm clincher rims. After polishing the hub's cones and races and replacing the bearings they now spin silky smooth. The front derailleurs are Suntour Superbe Pro. The last before indexing. The are shifted with old Suntour ratcheting type bar shifters. The freewheel is a 12-23 tooth 7 speed Suntour New Winner. The crankset is an old Sugino 110 bolt diameter double with 170 mm length crank arms. The chainrings are 48 and 34 tooth.

The reason I was able to make this bike into a cyclocross bike is the fact that it was built for 27" wheels. When using 700cm rims you have to use long reach brake calipers and you also have clearance room for fatter tires. My brake calipers are Campy Super Record. The saddle is a Rolls with titanium rails mounted on to a Campy two bolt seatpost.

The handlebar, stem, and brake levers are the only new components on the bike. The handlebars are 46cm wide Richey bolted onto a Dimension stem with a two bolt clamp. The brake levers are Tektro aero and Cane Creek cyclocross.

Right now the frame's paint job looks rough. I have sanded some rust spots off and covered them with clear coat. I also have some other rust spots. For right now I just plan to ride this baby over the winter. Mostly cross country mountain biking on gravel, dirt, and logging type roads. One day I plan on giving this frame the restoration and new paint job it deserves.

Lets here it to 25 more years of service out of my old Holdsworth Pro. What an awesome bike!!!!

sced

That's interesting about the ride quality on the Claud. I've read many times over on BF that geometry plays as big of a role as material type on handling and ride, and it would seem that a life time ago frame makers had a really good handle on this. With all of the computer-based engineering tools available these days + other materials there is a better handle on getting the desired frame characteristics while getting the weight down.

I also have a tight geometry tigged Columbus steel Viner (93) racing bike/frame with a steel fork that rides amazingly (hard) like the upright Fastback even though it is 20 years newer and supposedly quite different. For me putting longer rake CF forks on them so that they would give a smoother ride would change their appeal. I think about them like old sports cars where looks and character are almost everything. I'm guessing that's accounts for some of the motive behind the "upgrades" to your Mistral. BTW, what's the life expectancy on that aluminum freewheel?

Years ago I rode thousands of miles on those little black Detto Pietro slippers with the steel Anquitiel slotted cleats mounted by a cobbler. I don't remember any comfort problems with them at all like my recent experience with slotted plastic cleats on a newer shoe. Maybe it's just that I'm now more brittle, but I'm wondering if the slots in the Anquitiel cleats were wider to provide some float.

sced

HERE HERE! Maybe more of a case of form fitting function....a nearly perfect solution.

I think a lot of young people think today's steel frames, with the higher strength/lighter steels and compact geometries, are so much better than the old timers. I haven't ridden one of them, but I doubt the difference amounts to maybe a pound saved and practically nothing in ride characteristics. There especially seems to be a lot of demand today for fancy frames with lugs that cost a pretty penny. How different can these be? I'm wondering if I'm missing something WAH WAH:-)

There's a frame that looks a lot like yours on Ebay right now:
https://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...=STRK:MEWAX:IT

Oldpeddaller

No argument over the effect of modern design technology, there are some brilliant frames out there! I find it fascinating that with only one basic material (steel tubing of one kind or another), years ago frame builders were able to build in ride characteristics to order, first drawing a blue-print and sending this to the customer for approval before cutting a single tube or filing a lug - at least that's how Claud Butler and Holdsworth both operated up to about 1957, when Claud went bust. My Massi has it's original carbon fork, which absorbs a lot of the harshness of rough surfaces but nowhere near as much as the Mistral or Claud's steel forks. The Viner came without a fork so I fitted what I had to hand. This was a Belgian Jazz Cycletech carbon fork that's a lot more "aero" and flatter than the Massi's and gives quicker handling but a harsher ride, but is quite a good match for the frame's tight characteristics.

You're right about the 'retro-upgrades' to the Mistral: the more it approaches original spec, the better it gets! Just shows that Holdsworth got it right back in 1970. No idea how long the alloy freewheel will last; hopefully a while, because I screwed it onto the hub before discovering that a standard two-prong remover won't get it off! I do have another set of sprint wheels with tubs and a steel block so the bike will be OK but it'd be a shame if I have to scrap a Record high flange hub because I can't get a worn-out freewheel off - still, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.......

It's a long time ago now, but I'm sure I fitted my TA shoe-plates myself, which might account for some of the problems I had back then. I seem to recall trying to align the slot with the mark made by the back of the pedal and then using Araldite and tiny nails I was given by a shoe repairer to fix them to the leather soles. You're propbably right about the Anquetil cleats having a wider slot - mine used to feel like the pedal was welded to the shoe! (Got pretty good at track-standing in traffic though).

Oldpeddaller

Great to see the Holdsworth Pro being used so much. The build looks perfect for the type of riding described. I'm interested to see that the SR callipers reach a 700C rim - the clearance on my old Typhoon is far to big for a "normal reach" brake to line up with a 700C rim. Plenty of space for mud and mudguards (fenders) though!

I've got a mix of classic and newer bikes and like both. The ride comfort is certainly better on the older frames in my experience - but then I'm getting older too and comfort is now much more important to me than it was years ago. The modern bikes are certainly light and fast but I find them more tiring to ride the longer distances, maybe because it's hard to bring yourself to dawdle on one - a bit like driving a Ferrari at 50mph ~I would imagine! I have to say that of all my bikes, if absolutely pushed I would have to choose my Holdsworths, Claud Butlers and my Vitus 979 as my favourites - and the newest of those is twenty five years old!

sced

1952 Holdsworth Cyclone for sale on Ebay.....beautiful lugs.

https://cgi.ebay.com/Beautiful-Holdsw...item27add1c5e4