I'm really pleased that so many of you appreciate this lovely frame. I think it's turned out beautifully and that's all due to Argos Racing Cycles. My only part was buying it and sending it to them and then responding to their questions as to what I wanted done. They even sent me a paint tin top painted with the colour they had matched to the original to see if I liked it. I did.

The only metalwork they needed to do was to check the alignment of the frame and reshape the seat tube at the top. As I mentioned before, the frame takes a 27mm seat post and they are hard to find. OTOH, 26.8mm are pretty common and I think the misshaped seat tube was the result of someone tightening the clamp around a smaller post, very probably a 26.8mm.

I see some posters are unfamiliar with Bayliss Wiley (B&W) Oil-bath Unit BBs...

Whereas most frames have a threaded bottom bracket shell to screw the fixed cup into on the drive-side and the adjustable cup into on the non-drive side, frames such as this PARIS have a smooth BB shell into which is inserted a tube which is threaded on the inside at the ends. Instead of the fixed cup and adjustable cup lock rings being flat they have tapered shoulders which wedge the BB Unit in place to stop it turning.

Untitled by Dawes-man, on Flickr

As reported, I managed to get hold of a B&W Unit BB, when I was in the UK in May. This morning I checked it on the PARIS and found that both the sleeve and the cup end tapers were too big. Now, some of you may remember some trouble I mentioned I was having quite a while back with another similarly equipped frame, a 1950 Thanet Superlight. The B&W Unit was too small and the locking tapers too small to effectively stop the Unit from turning in the frame. I despaired and left it, meaning to get a brass shim made up or to firm it up with some calendar paper. And there it sat. As my chin hit my chest this morning a light came on and I found the Unit I got for the PARIS to be a perfect fit for the Thanet and vice versa. As you can imagine, I am one happy biker.

I've also fitted the wheels to the PARIS and they are a perfect fit, which is odd as the spread at the back is 117mm. Something I didn't mention is that as well as having been built for use with an Osgear, they also came with some very pretty Titan wing nuts, something I'd never seen before, only having been aware of their seat posts and stems.

1949 PARIS Tour de France by Dawes-man, on Flickr

And this is how it looks with the wheels, the Brampton headset, the seat post clamp and the 27mm Campagnolo 2-bolt seat post (actually my favourite design of post) which I've got until I can find a 27mm saddle-clip type Reynolds bullet-nose pillar.

1949 PARIS Tour de France by Dawes-man, on Flickr