juvela

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Thomas D. Cross & Sons Limited of Birmingham


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browngw 

Although there are no markings on the stem, it has a Birmingham look to it. Very similar to a Sun I used to own. It did clean up very nicely. The Tagaki


Sparkly and clean.
cranks are 165mm not 160 as I first thought. The stem measured 21.9mm and the drop bar measured 24.9mm at the raised center portion.
Work continues.

browngw 

The now verified as 1972, the CCM Turismo has provided many hours of meaningful (to me) activity. It has been totally dismantled, cleaned, straightened, polished and refitted where required. All bearings, chain, cables have been replaced. Tires and bar tape are new as well. The ill-fitting Pletscher rear rack was removed. The center pull brakes meant it had to sit at a weird angle. Will have to wait for better weather for a test ride, but it feels good in the saddle. The Bluemels Popular mudguards required a lot of work and I recommend JB Weld Plastic repair for the job. Although a friend had some NOS thin plastic tape available, I went for some older, fairly thin Fizik microtex my son gave me. The tires are Panaracer Pasela. Some of the pictures were shot in our dining room today with whatever available lights I could find.
I sent a couple of shots to the late owners son last night. He said it would have made his dad happy as he really loved that bike.
I will show some more detail shots later.



After a quick clean.

garryg

Loving the Canadian content. What a great survivor.

markk900

Fantastic job - sure is nice to see it looking so good.

browngw 

The 1972 CCM Turismo is completed, at least for now. So many hours of detailing each original part to keep the bike as as usable "original" The fork reflectors were rebuilt using the reflectors out of older pedals based on the originals which were broken and faded. It seems 72 was the only year they used them (thankfully!) The rear Cat-eye reflector cleaned up nicely. To lengthen the mud guard stays for better shape, I fabricated an extension from a conduit clamp. Each spoke was carefully cleaned and waxed. Now it's on to other projects. The first shot is a non-drive side shot featuring my rebuilt period kickstand.

browngw 

Recent pictures of the 1972 CCM Turismo. Since these shots Jay Noack sent me the upper cap for the Lark rear derailleur.

Bad Lag

That there is a gen-u-ine gas pipe special from the early 70's bike boom.

That it has 27" wheels means to me it is later into the boom era (70's). A lot of '68-'69 bikes still had 26 X 1 3/8 wheels.

Hold onto it. It is in GREAT shape!

Mark my words, someday, they may be the rarest of all breeds. No one respects them and they just trash them, something they would never do to a Colnago or Masi or other respected brand. As a result, sooner or later, they will all be gone. Everyone will say, "Where'd they all go?"

browngw 

It's special to me as a part of Canadiana, and knowing its history from the day of sale. I spent literally hundreds of hours bringing it back to this condition. My friend had taken care of it but it was also ridden often. I don't ride it much anymore but it feels like a 50 year bike. 27" wheels go way back before the seventies, depending on the market. The earliest 27"x1 1/4" I owned was a 1958 Sun Cresta built in Birmingham England and brought to Canada by its original owner. I've since sold the Sun to a good friend but I will picture it here as it was a lovely example of a British sport tourist.

Narhay

Nice to read about Sandbanks and Scarborough.

I would have been hard pressed to keep the reflectors but I do enjoy the intent behind the restoration.

T-Mar

That was the quick and dirty approach to a 10 speed bicycle. You took your existing English racer style 3 speed and replaced the IGH with derailleurs. It avoided retooling the frame for the larger size wheels. However, that approach was far more common in the USA than in Canada.

The leading Canadian manufacturer, CCM, did not take that approach. The reason was CCM's long standing partnership with Dunlop tyres. When CCM was formed in 1899, their chosen tyre format was the Dunlop wired-on. Consequently, when Dunlop introduced their 27" Endrick style rim, CCM was an early adopter. Their Flyer road racer was spec'd with these rims as early as 1934 and continued to use them through to it's demise in the late 1950s, with the 10 speed Prolite Flyer. When CCM re-introduced derailleur models in 1965, the consumer level, adult, 10 speed, racing style bicycles had frames that were tooled around 27" wheels. The only exceptions were the actual competition models, spec'd with tubular tyres.

Since CCM was the leading bicycle manfacturer in Canada, most of the smalller companies tended to follow their lead. As a result, even during the late 1960s pre-boom era, the 27" wheel was dominant in Canada on 10 speed, racing style bicycles. Consequently, you shouldn't use wheel size as an age parameter when examining Canadian racing style bicycles.

browngw 

Those front reflectors in particular are a story unto themselves! I thought when I saw the bike for the first time that they had been stuck on there by David the original owner. We drove from Port Dover to Picton with our campervan during one of the slacker periods of the pandemic. Our friends place has a nice big garage and we camped in the drive with our own 30A RV plug. We had been looking at the bike and moving it around as Ryan was filling us in on its history and the shop where it was sold. One of the fork reflectors must have fallen off, as they were pretty faded and fragile. After we were back home Ryan messaged that he had found the reflector, did I want it? Of course I said no, just toss it. A few days later I learned that it was a one year only original installation (maybe Tmar). I called Ryan back and he found it in his garbage can and mailed to me. I scrounged through a box of old reflectors but found nothing when it occurred to me that a pedal reflector might work, Dug through older (and newer) pedals until I found the correct size. Then using double faced auto trim tape and shiny aluminum duct tape fashioned a reasonable facsimile.
After all that fuss about the fork reflectors, I decided to keep the rear one as well.



Camped out in October at Ryan's place outside Picton.

The polished and cleaned rear reflector. Auto Plastic Polish works great.

Repurposed front reflectors.

The seat tube is like reading a book!

T-Mar

All those 12T sporockets! Must've been wishful thinking on the graphic artist's part. I don't think that CCM ever marketed a bicycle with a 12T sprocket.

Those fork reflectors were the victim of a lot of shipping damage. I've always suspected that was the reason behind their short, one model year existence.