I'm hoping I have found a place where people still appreciate craftsmanship from the era where beauty and functionality went hand in hand. As found on my old race bike, a custom build on a 1971 Bob Jackson Gran Prix frame. I still ride it occasionally, and each time I do it it's like greeting an old friend. Here are a few pictures, enjoy!
Chuck

You are definitely in the right place. Your bike is in amazing condition, hard to believe that it is over 50 years old. Having owned it that whole time makes it even more special.

Thanks for sharing the pictures, you've definitely found the right place.

Love the paint details on the Bob Jacksons. You got a good one. Welcome.

Nice bike. Hubs are awesome

Beautiful bike and wow!…I like those wheels. I’ve collected a good number of bikes from British builders but I’ve yet to find a Bob Jackson in my size in the condition I’m willing to pay for. Your bike has reinvigorated my search.

The condition is due, I think, to never having been stored in a garage or shed where condensation and the resulting corrosion slowly take their toll. That and the fact that I considered it my “good bike”. I had another bike for bad weather, commuting and touring, a 1967 Raleigh Carlton. I still have that bike as well. It is slated for a ride around Michigan’s Old Mission Peninsula in October. I will try to post some pictures of that bike when I find some time, although I’m not sure it qualifies as a classic since the entire drivetrain has been replaced/ungraded as parts wore out. Runs good though!
Chuck

Welcome to the forum! It took me 15 years of garage sales, flips and bike swap events to work my way up to a Bob Jackson after I got into the C&V world.

I really like the combo of a stronglight 93 crank with campy derailleurs. I prefer that look over a campy NR crank. Plus the 93 can go as small as 37 which is a plus.

I bought the Stronglight cranks for the roller bearing BB, which is indestructible as far as I can tell. The chainrings are a different story, softer material and wear faster than Campy in my experience.
Chuck

I can remember getting print catalogs from Bob Jackson in the late '80s - early '90s, it was crazy all the options they had!

Oh, it qualifies.

Dunno, It has been a while but I've seen some Rockwell hardness tests for chainrings and Stronglight chainrings were pretty respectable. That is a neat bottom bracket. The 122 bcd Stronglight 93 crank lets you run smaller chainrings than the 144 bcd campy.

When I was with Trek, we did some hardness testing of various chainrings. I don't remember the numbers, but Campagnolo and Stronglight were the hardest, and pretty close to each other, Sakae Ringyo, Sugino and Shimano were softer and pretty close to each other, and TA was the softest.

That is my recollection of the Rockwell hardness tests that i saw. We were a Trek dealer but also a big Peugeot dealer and stocked stronglight cranks.

Classic British builders are the equals of any Italians, imo.

Nice bike!

Welcome to BF.

Ooh, bi-valent hubs, so cool. Stunner of a bike.

So maybe I am wrong about the Stronglight rings being softer. Maybe the anodizing on the Campy rings helps reduce wear? At least they look anodized to me.
Chuck

Bivalent hubs?!? And you didn't mention them!?!?!?

I’m looking forward to your upcoming thread on the 67 Raleigh Carlton. I’ve got one too and I love it! I’ve done a thread for mine but not enough of those get posted here.

I just finished mounting new tires on my spare wheels, Red Labels instead of Yellow Labels and 25mm tires instead of 21mm. They were my “training wheels” allowing me to save the Yellow Labels and Criterium Seta Extras for racing.

Great story and great bicycle. Intriguing build too with Bivalent four-cross racing and training wheels and the component mix, as it so often was decades ago.

A page from the 1993 catalogue, after Bob Jackson returned to the business, showing the Grand Prix. Happy to post more if there’s interest - I haven’t looked around for them.

What am I missing here? I only see two photos focused on the bivalent hubs, which other posts indicate might not have been a focal point of the original post... Was it edited without an "edit" note appearing?

I love Bob Jacksons and look forward to admiring the whole bike!

-Gregory

This is one of my favorite rides out of Traverse City. You can look across the bay to land on both the west and east side. The houses along the way are pretty spectacular. It used to be that the houses on the east side were more modest than the west but now that is where most new building occurs. The upper part of the peninsula is still cherry orchards. The General Store in the village of Old Mission is just for tourists to get a pop or snack. The lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula is a destination for tourists too.

Fellow Michigan framebuilder Matt ASsenmacher learned to build frames at Bob Jackson in 1972 or 3. His bicycle shop was in Swartz Creek near Flint. He recently retired. I visited Bob Jackson's frame shop when I was learning to build frames at nearby Ellis Briggs in Shipley in 1975

I am posting a photo of my Bob Jackson. I don't want to corrupt your thread but there are so few of them shown here, I thought it to be at least tangentially relevant. If you'd like, I will remove it.

Mine is certainly from the same era as yours. I am the original owner and it's also now over 50 years old. My best guess is there are about 100k miles on this frame - riding, loaded touring, commuting,... you name it.

It no longer has its original paint and during that repaint a few braze-ons were added. All the mods were later added by Jackson added to his newer models.