custom bikes!

[patricklambert]

was havinng a mini convo on my thread about bikes so heres a offtopic post! various ( rat) bikes to custom shoppers! il put more on tomorow![frame][/frame][frame][/frame][frame][/frame][frame][/frame][frame][/frame]

[marcusthemoose]

nice one patrick, some kool bikes there. heres a couple of mine for starters, need to take a few more pics of my others. now i have a reason to do it!

my brat rod, so called cos its made from a little girls bratz bike.

my old sunbeam

and again

my raleigh chipper as found, currently undergoing restoration (when i am not doing my car!)

c'mon everybody (R.I.P, eddie) lets see your custom bikes- or spend an afternoon making a "rat", and photograph it- its actually quite fun.

[mikeysmorris]

Hi, you want odd ball bikes you will get odd ball bikes, wait till you see mine I will post a photo up tomorrow to dark now

nite nite all MIKEY.[frame][/frame]

[marcusthemoose]

nice one mikey! where did you get a schwinn stingray saddle from? or do you have a stingray as well?
i want to make a propper chop, but not got a welder yet. i am hopefully going to make one for my a level engineering project.

[patricklambert]

Wow great bikes! Love the whie one! Havent seen one like it before! Il take some pics soon of my others!

[Peetee]

My Custom 531 MTB. Designed by yours truly, built in Falmouth by Dennis Field (a task he never repeated) and still going strong 20 years later.

[marcusthemoose]

as everyone knows, quality lasts. 531 tubing is the very best. i beleive it refers to a special inner profile of tubing.

[quote="patricklambert"]Wow great bikes! Love the whie one! Havent seen one like it before! Il take some pics soon of my others![/quote

if you ment my white one, then its not white anymore. it is now yellow! it should really look like this:

i appears to have been abused by a previous owner. the handle bars are a length of copper pipe. the yellow was under the white aerosol paint job.

[Blaketon]

I designed the frames of two of my bikes, one was built by my father, the other in China!! I do however make my living in the cycle trade.

[frame][/frame]

[patricklambert]

few pics of my pride and joy royal enfield and a old ratty raleigh[frame][/frame][frame][/frame][frame][/frame]

[andrew.searston]

heres my beast . it was a complete mess when i bought it for a tenner. (still need to finish it ). so smooth to ride[frame][/frame]

[marcusthemoose]

is that a wayfarer with dyno hub andrew?

loving the painted headlamp lense patrick.

why have i not got pics of mine yet i ask myself!

[andrew.searston]

mines a raleigh rex. i bought the mud gaurds off ebay and painted the whole bike my self. was met blue which looked to modern so i painted it a vw maroon and added gold pin stripe, painted the pump white and pin striped that as well.
my brother has an original wayfarer in blue thats been in the family since new. basicly looks the same as mine but in blue.
ill get some pics up when my brother digs it out
almost forgot mine does have a dyno hub on the front , just got to get it working

[Peetee]

531 tubing is the very best. i beleive it refers to a special inner profile of tubing

Reynolds 531 is a label used to define the company's standard round, drawn (rather than rolled and welded) chrome manganese molybdnenum steel tubing. the 5 3 and 1 relate to the three named alloys used in the steel. Reynolds have produced many steel tubesets in differing grades and profiles. 500, 501, 525, 531, 631, 653, 708, 731, 753, 853 and 953. They are almost uniiversally regarded as the industry standard of excellence. Apart from bicycles the tubing has appeared in aircraft, motorcycles and land speed record vehicles. I consider myself a bit of an expert on the stuff having owned bikes with nearly all of the tubing mentioned above. I can say with confidence that each tube set has its own character and virtues and when all is said and done, like many things in life, it's only as good as the hands that assemble it.

[Blaketon]

The inner profile referred to is the butting, which thins the tubing where there strength is not needed and thus saves weight. On the down tube and top tube the butts were at both ends, the seat tube was single butted above the bottom bracket, whilst the head tube was plain gauge (Has to be reamed to take the headset cups). 531 was plain gauge, then there was 531 DB (Double butted), which became 531 ST, there was 531 SL which I suppose was replaced by 653 (There were others like 531 C which had 531 ST main triangle and harder forks and stays). 753 is 653 but heat treated to make it harder. You can only use silver solder and lugs to build with this, as bronze means using to much heat, which would affect the heat treatment. Frame builders had to be approved to use 753; my father has a certificate from Reynolds to say that he can!! 853 and the like have come along due to the need for far eastern builders to TIG weld the frames. 501 came quite late and was not really more than just a name. It wasn't gas piping but it certainly wasn't 531.

Nowadays (Welded) aluminium has come into widespread use (Alan used to make glued aluminium frames back in the 1970s), as has carbon fibre. Many such frames are made in the far east and often the price paid depends of the marketing of the brand that appears on the frame. Some of the far eastern frames are well made and can provide a light frame, that doesn't lighten the wallet too much. Some are a lot better than the hand built stuff (Even the stuff that had a good name!!) that used to be more common. However a well built hand built steel still has a lot going for it!!

Aluminium and carbon fibre are more prone to fatigue than steel and whereas if a steel frame, that was bronze welded, brazed or silver soldered together needs to be repaired, it can be done, with aluminium and carbon, they tend to be binned. The only problem with steel is that they rust but the owner has some control over that. However in the fashion concious scene that is cycling, keeping a frame for years and getting it re enamelled every so often is no longer commonplace.

[Peetee]

there was 531 SL which I suppose was replaced by 653

Now you have opened a can of worms.
531SL became 531pro. It was the same composition of 531DB but pro, along with 531ST and 531c, utilised tube wall thicknesses tailored to the job in hand.
753 is light guage heat treated 531 and is a superb tubing that builds into a fantastic performance frameset.
653 was a combination tubeset using different guages and levels of heat treatment to offer a performance and price bridge between 531 and 753 tubing. It did replace 531pro in the market place but was superior.

[marcusthemoose]

andrew, is it the hub itself that is the problem, or the wiring? get yourself on sheldon browns website.
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/dynohubs.html
this should tell you all you need to know on repairing them. hope it helps.

[Blaketon]

Now you have opened a can of worms.

Indeed. This shows the extent of it

[frame][/frame]

When we started, there was basically 531 & 531 DB, 531 SL and 753. There was also Columbus and Ishiwata. Indeed someone from Germany contacted us the other day, as he had recently bought one of our old frames, built from 015 in the mid 1980s (That stuff, with a wall thickness of 0.015", was very thin and could be dented very easily) and he was very pleased to receive a copy of the original order (Customers name removed; sadly dead for many years - he rode into a parked car during a time trial - head down and not looking where he was going it seems).

[Peetee]

My everyday bike is a Raleigh branded as 'Dynatech' They used this name for a while to identify products that were of composite, bonded construction. This however is a conventional steel brazed frame (it is cyclocross and has team stickers so may well have been part of a sponsorship deal).It is constructed from Reynolds 708 of which I am very impressed. It has an oversized top tube (same as down tube) and the internal butted ends have flat sections to increase stiffness. It works very well and has a good tight feel when out of the saddle without any compromise in comfort. No idea what the base metal is but it rides like 531.
501 was a cro-moly so the name kind of fits in with the composition of 531 in somuch as the 0 refers to the lack of manganese. I have ridden two frames with this stuff; 1 a Peugeot which was excellent and not far off 531. The other was a harsh pig but i suspect only the main tubes were 501 the seatstays etc were inferior low grade tube. Usually the sticker gives it away but I have seen these wrongly assigned before. I had a 531 frame where you could see the weld lines down the inside length of the tubes.

[Blaketon]

If it's seamed, it won't be Reynolds. There was a time when you could only get the stickers from Reynolds (Each tube set came with them) but nowadays scanners make it easy to copy them. The respray ones had respray shown, not "Guaranteed built with...." We managed to get a few spare "Proper" ones, so I didn't have to use a respray sticker.

I tend to use the modern frames most of the time, so my 531 (Complete with period Super Record kit) doesn't get a hard life. I have a mind to take it for a spin tomorrow, if it's dry. On Monday I plan to use the carbon one (That's got modern Dura Ace), as there'll be some climbing involved and the carbon bike has lower gearing. Most of the time I use either a mountain bike or a Tiagra equipped Audacs bike.

[Peetee]

I bought the 'seamed' frame from a trade ad in Cycling Weekly back in 1990. it was supposed to be 531c which is a full set of, as you say, drawn tubing. I had built it up in a hurry and only noticed months later when I stripped it down that both the head and seat tubes were showing the seam. The builders replaced the frame suggesting cheaper 500 tubes had been used in error. You have to trust your builder. I know of one very highly regarded company who were instructed to use the remaining 531pro tubes in the 'new' 653 builds. the proprietor didn't seem too impressed by this and neither was I.