noglider 

And the card is about the Bike Cult show!

thylton48

Thanks for the great explaination. Must have been a great era the be a cyclist

imabeliever1

My go to bike when I am riding alone. 70's Dawes Galaxy , fixed.

BigChief 

nlerner, I love your Super Course conversion. This is a dream project I've been thinking about for years. I'd love to know what you needed to do to fit the AM hub into the SC frame.

rustystrings61 

I have since sold it, but for many years I was the custodian of this c.1962 Dawes Realmrider. This one is unusual in having apparently been built from the start for a Sturmey-Archer FW 4-speed gear hub, with no derailleur braze-on fittings. No tubing decals, but it was decent stuff and rode very nicely. I am told the lugs are Ekla Racelites, and they were used by Dawes on several models through the years. Pictured with modern bars, stem, and B.17 with the original, badly rusted steel rims having been replaced with Mavic 27-in alloy units and the utterly lovely Panaracer Pasela tyres.

icepick_trotsky 

Super Course frame popped up on my local CL, if you want to attempt the project, @BigChief. Paint is rough, and I don't know your size, but the price is right, and it comes with an early Dura Ace crankset.

Raleigh Supercourse frame/fork

icepick_trotsky 

Where's @AZORCH with his Hobbs of Barbican?

AZORCH

Azorch is out riding in circles around the downtown airport.




...oh...but you probably wanted a clear photograph, huh?

BigChief 

I'd need to know how the O.L.D on a Super Course would work with a 4 1/2" SA 3 speed hub. But apparently, it can be done. I've also heard that you can use a crank with a 10 speed sprocket with a single speed chain, but I have no experience with this myself. Just wondering what problems I would have to overcome with a Super Course 3 speed conversion.

icepick_trotsky 

Is that the KC downtown airport? Between the planes landing on one side, the highway on the other side, and the busy railyard just beyond that, that ride seems...unpleasant. Love that bike, though.

rhm

Sturmey Archer made AW axles in a few different lengths; more info here. On a bike with widely spaced dropouts, you can use a longer axle. This is especially necessarily on a bike with thick (forged) dropouts. On a frame with thin (stamped or cut) dropouts, and I think most Super Courses are in that group, you can cold set the rear triangle and use the common 5 3/4" axle.

AZORCH

You called it right - it is the downtown airport. And it's actually not unpleasant at all...lots of neat planes, some vintage, out there. And a lot of urban cyclists go out to do loops. I beat them all of course. (In my dreams.)

icepick_trotsky 

The dropouts on the Super Course should be 120 OLD, right? Per Sheldon:

AZORCH

I used a modern Sturmey Archer S-RF3 on my '71 International three-speed conversion. Works like a charm.



I get a lot of road miles in with this bike.

icepick_trotsky 

A lot to love about that bike. Are those fenders SKS?

AZORCH

Yup. Longboards. Love 'em.

icepick_trotsky 

I posted this on the "Are you looking for one of these" thread, but I think it belongs here, too. Beautiful frame.

rhm

Well, yeah, that is pretty! But aren't we getting into another type of bike, the single speed road bike? That one has mounts for headlight and taillight, eyelets for fenders, and track fork ends. Fork appears to have oval blades, though.

My Claud Butler is a similar bike; road geometry with brake bridge and fork crown drilled for centerpull brakes, but track ends, round fork blades. This model (Holdsworth-built Olympic Sprint from the mid 60's) usually had fender eyelets front and back, either omitted on mine at customer's request, or perhaps drewed by a previous owner.

icepick_trotsky 

Seems like a pretty fuzzy distinction to me, @rhm. If club bikes also came with fixed/single hubs as an option, is the only difference then whether the frame had track ends or road dropouts?

rhm

Yes, a fuzzy distinction indeed! The obvious signs of a track frame are the fork ends and round fork blades; the less obvious sign is much more aggressive geometry. But in the period we're discussing they sometimes put round fork blades on road bikes. For example, the Raleigh RRA of the postwar era had forward facing dropouts, mudguard eyelets, boss for Sturmey Archer pulley wheel at the top of the seat tube, so definitely in the "club" style of the era; but round fork blades.

But the fact is they did make these "road-path" frames, as such, so evidently there was a distinction. It rides like a road bike, but it's styled like a track bike. Here's the 1966 catalog page for my Olympic Sprint (but the photo shows an earlier model; the ornate fork crown had been discontinued by this time).

clubman 

'58 Raleigh Superbe, original except bag support. SW hub

'57 Canadian Sports, flip flop

'37 CCM Road Racer, flip flop, closer to road/path

icepick_trotsky 

Neat. I'd pay 10 pounds for one.

Sixty Fiver

My Lenton has horizontal dropouts but was offered and sold as a fixed gear with an option to have a 3 speed hub fitted.

Single speed and track hubs work fine in horizontal dropouts for road bicycles that have more clearance to the seat tube, track bicycles tend to be pretty tight so a track end is favourable to set the wheel position as close to the seat tube as possible.

icepick_trotsky 

Yes, but as seen in @rhm's Claud Butler above, these fixed/single frames with road geometry have ample rear wheel clearance, despite having track ends. Presumably this is to accommodate fenders and larger tires. My point is that the distinction between road single, path racer, and club model seems pretty meaningless if the geometry is the same, the drivetrain options were the same, and the only difference is the type of dropout.

I know they were marketed differently (and maybe existed in different periods?), I just don't see a functional difference.

noglider 

I notice our style of writing becomes British in this thread.