Originally Posted by PhilFo

If I were to title this post, I'd call it "bike forensics and N+2? 3?" Or perhaps, "skip over this nattering rubbish, save yourselves."

If any here have perused the for sale subforum here in C&V, you may have seen my 1951 Rudge Aero Clubman up there last week or so. I wrote about this find/build in September of '23 in this thread. In a nutshell, I found the Rudge last summer, have wanted one since 2014 and have wanted a single-speed path racer as well. I thought I could make the Rudge work for me, but it's just too small for me to ride with drop bars. So, I set out to sell it and find something else to scratch the British 531 path racer / club itch. My friend Graham sent me a photo of a 1974 Raleigh Super Course frame (no fork) that I could have. I picked it up after work that night and found that it's straight, but the bottom bracket shell was hacked down to 66mm, so that needs to be dealt with using a spacer and some decent application of loctite. I found a perfect Carlton fork for it and began to do a bit of building by swapping over the parts from the Clubman (after I took the latter off the market). I found that the fork was an oddball in that it has a 26.4mm crown race seat but also a 26tpi steer tube threading; and no, the crown race was not turned down as it still has original paint overspray on it. So I ordered a new crown race (I was planning on using an old Stronglight A9 I have knocking around) and during some down time at work, I was perusing ebay for bits and somehow went down a rabbit hole on the UK site... This was bad for my pocketbook because all of a sudden, there were way too many path / club frames from some niche marques. I ride a 58cm (any smaller and I get irritation in my neck from an injury I got while in the Navy) and happened upon an R. O. Harrison with GORGEOUS lugs in my size. I threw out a lowball offer, thinking that I'd be shot down and maybe five minutes later got an "Offer Accepted! Pay Now." email.

So now I've got my dream curly lugged (Oscar Egg?), 531 path racer on the way, and I still have the Rudge Clubman AND a Super Course, both currently in project-status, as they are incomplete. Add five or six more bikes of my own, and the missus is beginning to question my use of space in the basement. She has her own flight of locomotion, including two trikes and a 1958 Rudge Sports. I'm not at all attached to the '74 Super Course, so that can leave, but it would also make a cool "beater" bike.

Anyway, last night I was a bit bored, looking for some tinkering to do, and took the Wald cruiser bar out of the flat-top stem, then set to do a bit of hillbilly repair on it before getting the frameset ready to sell again. (I'm from the high desert sticks of eastern New Mexico, so I feel I own the "hillbilly" moniker, in spite of living in Philadelphia.) A previous owner had stuck the wrong size bar in and drilled a hole in the top of the clamp and jammed in a machine screw to prevent the 7/8" bar from rotating in the 23.8mm clamp. I mixed up a gob of metal JB Weld and filled the hole, then let it cure overnight. Earlier this morning, the cured epoxy was Dremeled, leveled, wet-sanded and painted with a chrome pen. I was a bit beside myself how well this turned out. So the last thing I wanted to do was get the clamp done proper. I took a heavy chrome straight seatpost and stuck the narrow end in the clamp then gave it some gentle persuasion with a mallet; did this on both sides, then stuck in the original bar from my '56 Rudge Sports. I had a proper donor bolt with the key and wrenched down to really establish the correct clamp size. Now I'm impressed enough with the stem and a decent upright bar, I get to thinking of restoring this bike as an upright 3-speed.

Later in the afternoon, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole regarding the Rudge and original equipment, and I'm thinking the rear wheel which came with it may be original. To refresh, the bike was incomplete, but came with two mismatched wheels, the rear a steel shell 40 hole AW from 1951, laced to a Rigida Superchromix 27 x 1 1/4 rim. The front was an old 36 hole, alloy round-hole Normandy hub with wingnuts laced to a Rigida Chrolux rim. I'm thinking that the original front wheel was replaced with this one, some 60+ years ago and then it sat in a garage for the full duration of my life (47 years) before the previous owner acquired it as part of a cleanout lot.

Now my conundrum is, do I work to resto-mod the Clubman as a 3-speed upright, complete with correct Dynohub (though I would have lighting provided by a Busch & Muller OneFive)? I have a wonderful upright 3-speed in the 1956 Rudge Sports, which is the bike that I judge all others by, when it comes to comfort and reliability. It's seriously the bike for the end of the world as we know it / complete breakdown of civilization, as I'm confident it will keep working until we reach Star Trek era (23rd century?) I digress. If I fixed up the Clubman as a 3-speed, the chrome rims would go, and would be replaced with a set of something aluminum and polished, but finding new polished 700c or 27" rims in 40 hole drillings seems to be almost a fools errand. Perhaps a NOS set of Weinmanns could be sourced.

I'm rambling and need to make dinner. Would y'all sell the Clubman frameset or set about to make it into a new bike (which would probably eventually get sold at a loss, as wel)?
Any thoughts regarding my mental status, or the questions I pose are appreciated.

Phil