Some Soviet junk I have.
 

Hello everybody.

I tought my weird collection of bikes might be interesting to people here, soviet bicycles seem to be quite undocumented here. Being from a ex USSR occupied country, we have alot of this stuff laying around here. I also have some pre WW2 german stuff and one complete bike, might make another thread about it.

Lets start with the road bike, as i got it earliest in my adventure into the skinny tire world.
I found it on facebook marketplace, i was looking for the way more common HVZ Start Shosse or as translated Go Highway. Chromed fork ends caught my eye as they are uncommon on Starts, as it turned out it was a much earlier version of the Start Shosse - HVZ Champion made in 1962. It was in quite bad shape and in hindsight not worthy of a restoration, but it got done anyway. Chrome was sadly unsaveable. It was painted in automotive paint my friend had laying around, so the colour wasnt exactly my choice but i think it looks pretty cool. Its missing original brakes, and the front derailleur, and shifters were originally on the handlebar ends. I found NOS soviet tubulars for this thing. I suppose you will find most of the parts on this bike similar to the western parts they were copied off. Rear derailleur is a crude copy of Campy, brakes are Mafac Racer copies and so on.
During the paint removal stages, i noticed how this bike was painted in a Favorit livery, guess it was a effort to appear more western and look cooler back in the day.
As found:
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...3e030dd7b2.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...51e9199f58.jpg
Favorit livery with the original green mostly uncovered.
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...27d9db5f35.jpg
Completed
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...ac5ec6730e.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...8cb4a569b9.jpg
Nos, quality of them is pretty terrible.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...92f932df85.jpg
Upgraded to earlier more correct brakes and got the original badge for it

Nice, never saw something like this on a bike 'ussr'

Second bicycle i would like to share with is one of my favorites.

I have always ridden coaster brake bicycles and since most of my friends rode fixed gears, i preferred fixed gears to the geared normal ones. This one was for sale in our local marketplace.
Its a 1979 HVZ Meteor V68, intended for pursuit competitions on the velodrome as described in the factory manual. Its basically the highest end track bike available for sports clubs back in 1979. It had a sister version called Sprint V67, that was intended for sprints, as the name suggests. They were succeeded by the more common Sport Git as replacement for Meteor and Sport Sprint as replacement for the Sprint. Meteor was of Nikopol tubing,what is basically 0.6mm wall thickness Chrome moly tubing, nonbutted and seamless. Mine basically has none of its original parts, with only seatpost and bottom bracket remaining as original. It has a french thread bottom bracket. I will be getting a new fork for it soon, as the one on it is from a lower end HVZ Record track bike. This fork is defective as the bearing race sits crooked to the upper cup threading, so adjusting the headset bearings is basically impossible. These kinds of defects are common on soviet bikes.
Parts list:
Front wheel - Mavic GP4 28h with Campagnolo Record hub.
Rear wheel - Campagnolo Barcelona 92 with Gipiemme Pista hub.
Fork - HVZ Record
Saddle - Cinelli Unicanitor
Crankset - Campagnolo Record Strada
Stem - 3TTT pista
Handlebar - 3TTT Gimondi
Pedals - MKS track

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...0191d62908.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...01d41be5aa.jpg
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...21bbcaa394.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...b823cea81b.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...f15e2ac9da.jpg

Third one is a Olympic special edition Start Shosse 1981.
This one has some defects and because of them it was converted into a beater fixed gear. Rear dropout has been welded and the cable guides for the derailleurs have broken off. This one i suspect was also assembled on a monday or friday as the quality of everything is terrible. Brazing looks extremely sloppy, with deep file marks on every lug visible through the paint. Also the stickers are all crooked. Never seen one this bad with such a production year, normally they got really bad in the late 1980-s and early 1990-s.
I found some late HVZ cranks for this one, also extremely low quality but they are square taper. There were higher quality square taper cranks available from HVZ, my meteor had those from the factory, but they are sadly missing and finding them is pretty hard.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...4145c05e95.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...6760fdb58b.jpg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...7408833ab6.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...e02124aed1.jpg

And fourth one, this was bought as a frame because of the early badge that made it onto the Champion. But since the graphics looked cool, i threw some parts on it to make some sort of budget cyclocross kind of bike out of it. Rear triangle is bent, but it suprisingly rides straight. This is lowest end HVZ geared bicycle, frame is heavy and weak, most popular bikes with this frame were called the Tourist, this one is called Sport and from 1972.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...5ee39cdd17.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...454c3e0cc0.jpg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...369636ca83.jpg
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...36494807ab.jpg

Very interesting thread! I like the looks of the first bike, and would be interested in more detailed shot of the rear derailleur. Also curious if the rims take the same size tires as European rims, or if the size is slightly different. Thanks for sharing!

I currently dont have any better pictures of the rear derailleur, ill take some on the weekend. Basically a extremely crude Campagnolo Gran Sport copy that says Harkov on it. Tubular tires are marked 600 but people have been mounting 622/700C tubulars on them without any issues.

Thank you for these posts and pictures. You provide a glimpse into Soviet bicycle history that we rarely--- if ever see.

What I'm curious about is the use of English and not Cyrillic on the tubular tire. "Made in the USSR" is surprising. Was there a market in the west for Soviet made tubular tires, back in the day?

What is also weird is how the D in made is in Cyrillic. Start Shosses also had Made in USSR stickers on them, i doubt they were exported to the west. I know they sold the lower end Tourist/Sputnik/Sport bikes to west, these export models had more chrome, stem shifters and fancy paint jobs.

Did the the USSR ever produce titanium bikes? I remember when all the titanium snow shovels where going out the backdoor of submarine yards on to eBay.

I don't think so. There was a mtb in the 90s that was marketed that way, but was welded in Poland I think. There was A LOT of former Soviet Ti tubing sold off in the late 90s. I *think* I remember overhearing the owner mention that the Chinese factory that welded some of Airborne's frames were using Russian sourced ti.

I remember the shovel craze, never bought one though.

Total coolness! I would love to rock a Soviet track bike around here.

They show up on ebay from time to time.
Brent

Fun thread; thank you for sharing.

..and I like the reminder that not all "performance bikes" come from Western Europe, Japan, or the USA. I wonder where else they make bikes we haven't heard of? Middle East? South America (need a bike rack for that Puma or IKA Torino)? Indonesia?

Thanks for sharing,
Is there a giant cut-out of the stem on the last bike? Could you post a close up of that stem?

Yes there is, no closer pictures of it at the moment. Top of it is cast, its brazed onto the tube.

Those MAFAC like brake calipers are awesome !
Thanks for sharing your pictures

new zealand ? :-)


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...92ecda1258.jpg
ishiwata 022 Mitchell built here in New Zealand.

I love this. Subscribed. I've always been really interested with these. Bicycle Quarterly had an issue with an article covering the USSR derailleurs.

This is cool -- great thread. Previously I had seen only the Sputnik bikes. Its fun to see the mix of Russian/Cyrillic and English/Roman text on the various components and frames.

Seeing the Russian derailleurs reminds me a bit of Capo's (Austria) brief foray into derailleurs, which looked like crude copies of the Simplex of the day.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...d62b055e28.jpg
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...963a9bdfe1.jpg

Im pretty sure Harkov have made similar copies of these types of derailleurs, seen a rear one, there are pictures of the front one on the web.

I'm still looking for a PWB Favorit rear derailleur for my '73 Favorit with Rapido head badge. It may have looked like this. This bike was found in hung in the rafters of a residents garage. His wife said it was seldom used. Link is here https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...3-favorit.html

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...7278778e5a.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...b5e2da556f.jpg

Kharkov derailleurs

I still have this one in my treasure chest. I love its blue collar charm:

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...6b6f852d56.jpg

This is pretty radski, Comrades! To the glorious Soviet Union! :lol:

That tire was super neat.