About 40 years ago, a friend of the family gave me his brother's bicycle. It was used for touring in Nova Scotia, in the 50's or early 60's, before the brother lost his eyesight to a degenerative disease. I languished in my mother's basement for years as one of those projects I would get to "eventually". The passing of my mother and sale of the estate brought it home and I just had to tinker with it, seeing it every day.



Some of the cool thing about this bike. The rear tire is the Schwinn size, which I understand was used for "club" bicycles in the 40's and 50's. The front wheel, I may have replaced 40 years ago, it is not original and it has a old tire made in Holland with no name on it. It did have the remnants of plastic Bluemel fenders when it was given to me. I saved a set from my bike shop days of the 70's.

The chainring has BSA as part of the design:


Same with the pedals:


Piled Arms logo on the seat tube:



Brakes are BSA too. There is a tiny piled arms stamping on the link between the cable and brake arms. I need to set up a better macro shot to capture it. Funky brake levers, too.





Cyclo derailleur:



The 48 hub:


I took this just because of the attention to detail. The bezel was smashed and I was able to spoon it out to a serviceable shape. I need to have new glass cut though.




I have a decent Dynohub for the front wheel. It put out 5 volts just by spinning the wheel in my hand today. I am going to order aluminum rims and I will build a new front soon and wait for the Winter to do the rear. I will build them both to a more standard 26 x 1-3/8 to have a better tire selection.

I rode the bike a little today on a greenway trail and it was excellent. Smooth and quiet. My young adult bike revival began with a tour on a 3-speed from Connecticut up to Killington Vermont and this sure brought back some memories.

This is seriously cool. Nice one.

I know of no source for the twin wire cyclo shifter cable. At times they are offered on French ebay. if it is just slipping you can "punch" the front brass piece and tighten it on the wire. Your cyclo is indeed a post war model as it has the "C" cut out---early versions had a sq.or full type cut-out.

Wow! Super cool.

It is beautifully preserved. I can't wait to see you final results.

Watch out for that Schwinn-size tire. Actually you want 26x1 1/4. With something approaching adequate pressure that size tire will blow off the rim. DAMHIKT.

NICE bike!

What I find interesting is the bike has a Sturmey-Archer 3 speed internal hub and 3 additional external rear cogs shifted with the Cyclo derailleur. I have never seen that before..Very Nice!

Thanks. I remember trying to put a standard tire on the rear wheel and oops! The chain grip I put on is marked 26 x 1-3/8 but it states it is for Schwinn. It was common for that size to be on a tire for a Schwinn. My first 3-speed was a used Schwinn and I learned about tire size in mid-tour. In the early 70's I ran a bike shop that did over 100 repairs a week. I think everybody was caught by that at least once! I am going to solve the tire issue with new rims. I just hope the cracked tires last the rest of the season.

Thanks. Good info. I am hoping someone has the stops in a forgotten bin somewhere. They used to sell them for making up cables. I was able to get an NOS spring and I had a clamp that was ideal for the chainstay anchor. I had to fab a second chainstay clamp for the derailleur and a 1/2" conduit clamp was a good place to start. I need to improve it a little as the slot I cut left the clamp a little loose, but so far so good. Rev 2 will wait for cabin fever time.

Here's a '56 alloy shell AW & cyclo 3 cog set-up in service on my town bike (it's 3rd installation), works a treat.

Nice BSA! That will be a great project and fun to ride when "done".

-Bandera

Time Trialer, nice bike. Pretty much all the British bicycles of that era tick all the right boxes for me. Very nice... There are a couple of old English bicycle brands I hope to eventually snag: BSA and Armstrong.

While not common, there are quite a few out there with 2 or 3 cogs on the rear like this has. I often think of setting up one of my bicycles that way, but then my disdain for derailleurs comes to mind and I abandon the idea.

The combination of a three speed hub and a derailleur is very cool, but it is hard to find a combination of three gears that actually improves the ride.

The steps between the gears of an AW hub are equivalent to the difference between an 18 and 24t cog, so with three cogs you invariably end up with redundant gears and confusing shifting. I run an AW hub with two cogs on one bike, and that's a lot of fun; six evenly spaced gears over a decent range.

I've got a FW (4 speed wide range) with a post war Cyclo 2 speed conversion block, gives a range of 6 nearly equally spaced gears, one close and the remaining gear is repetitive.

Have of yet finished the build ( oh the shame of it) so I can not comment on actual outcome, but such conversion were common place in post war England. See:Hybrid Hub/Derailleur Gears for more details.

Although I've been running my AW/Cyclo 3 set-up for decades I still keep the gear ratios taped to the stem.
"Lets see is that 1 shift down w/ the derail and an up-click on the hub, or the other way around........?"
Fiddly and simultaneously confusing, very British.

That being said having a gear range of 41-106GI (top being for display purposes only) with 6 useful steps in between and the ability to shift while braking/stopped meet my requirements for a town bike quite nicely.

-Bandera

Here's mine. AW hub, two cogs. Now that I've finally got it working exactly the way I want it, and I know like it, I am finally going to get decent paint on the frame. Just haven't found the time to unbuild the bike.

Is that the Fothergill?

Yes, of course!

Is that grease? Or mud?

What rim size would an English "club" bike normally have?

On my bike? Could be anything. I rode on one morning after a rainstorm, and the underside of my bike got coated with waterlogged earthworms that proceeded to dry there. That was charming.


In the 30's-40's, EA1, AKA 26 x 1 1/4, ISO 597; coincidentally the same as the Schwnn size. Mostly superseded by 27 x 1 1/4 in the early 50's, though some manufacturers didn't use up their old stock of EA1 rims until well into the 60's.

I can only attest to what's on my two Record Aces, and what was on the Raleigh Golden Arrow wheels my Father had on his Paramount - 26 x 1 1/4. Probably a safe guess for Raleighs, but I'll bet more widespread than that.

PS: I see some agreement, but I strongly question whether the Schwinn 26x1 3/8 is equivalent to the British 26 x 1 1/4. I base my question on pretty bitter experience, and a very long walk.

Many had the requirement to switch from "wired-on" (clinchers) to "sprints" (tubulars) for club events.
See pic for how they were carried to & fro.

Sizes ran from 26 x 1 1/4 to 27 x 1 1/4 for wired-on depending on period, my late model ('74) came w/ tubulars and fits 700C.

Here's a great site: Classic Lightweights

-Bandera

The BSA has 26x 1-3/8" Schwinn size tires. I plan to convert it to 590 rims and put on Panaracer tires to use it for rail trails.
I have a 13-19-24 cog set with a 46T chainring.

Envious of the braze-on mount.

That's a Very Manly and useful range (except Top):

.75Low 1.0 DD 1.33 High
13T 72 96 127
19T 49 66 87
24T 39 52 69

-Bandera

I was fortunate to buy a 44T BSA crank set, so that will drop things down a bit.