Comb company lamberts
 

A good friend of mine gave me a pretty rough Viscount frame, knowing I’m a sucker for anything fillet-brazed. I suspect he was wary of the badly seized bottom bracket, as well as the seat post that found itself a comfortable home. The U of M Professor he bought it from claimed it had once been given as a (gag?) prize at some local race here in the Twin Cities area. Whatever its history there were no dents or holes, and it is suprisingly light. I’ve read some sources claiming the bare frame weighed 3.75 lbs, but my 58cm example weighs in at 4.37 lbs, according to the postal scale. That’s still a full pound less than some 48cm straight-gage bare CroMo frames I’ve got, or 1.5 lbs less than a couple 56cm CroMo frames. A bonus for me is this frame has the integral RD hanger.
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The first order of business was the liberation of the stubborn BB and seat post, as I wasn’t going to go hunting for parts for a frame I couldn’t use. Anyone who has worked on these early Lamberts and Viscounts knows the bottom bracket and crankset are unique to the bikes. They have off-the-shelf sealed automotive bearing inserts, pressed into the frame with a special shoulder-less spindle held in place with circlips. The theory may have been that buying replacement bearings (P/N 6003-2RS from one source) at your local NAPA (or closest British equivalent) would make servicing these bearings cheaper & easier. In practice the spindles have a habit of rusting to the bearing ID. They also have a reputation for snapping at the circlip groove under hard use. All of this doesn’t even mention those dreaded aluminum forks, which in any case was missing from my example.

Anything Viscount or Lambert related on eBay seems to go for a premium, so I quit looking for parts there. I’ve read that Phil Wood once sold stainless spindles for these, but that also sounded spendy. I couldn’t find one on his site anyway, so I began looking locally. I was surprised to actually find Lambert parts bikes for sale on CL.

This is where things began to get weird. The first parts bike I went to look at was an early Lambert fillet-brazed frame with a lugged head tube, painted flat black on the front along with 4 or 5 inches of the TT & DT. It also had a chromed steel fork, painted flat black on the top half. The original owner stated he bought the bike new that way, although it had been welded at the DT/HT joint. Apparently he loaned the bike to a buddy who promptly broke the frame, then brought it somewhere and had it welded. The seller swore the bike was all original and painted flat black in front before the crash, but I chalked that up to 40-odd years of fading memory. None of the Lamberts or Viscounts I’d seen online had this half-brazed, half-lugged frame construction. The flat black paint looked exactly like what someone would do to try and cover a crude repair. But the price was perfect, so I strapped the bike onto the back of my car and headed home.
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Stay with me here. Evening traffic was bad that day, so I took a Parkway detour on a whim. Spotting a couple 60-ish gals walking their bike along the sidewalk, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that one of them was walking an old Lambert. They were wary when I rolled my window down and asked for a chat, but having an identical bike on the back of my car had them curious, too. Turns out the gal claimed to have bought her Lambert new around ’71-72 from a long gone local big-lot seller named Comb Company, located on Hiawatha Avenue in South Minneapolis. That’s also where my bikes’ seller said he bought his. She said she could still picture the full-page Comb Company newspaper ad hawking a new Viscount Aerospace bicycle for a hundred dollars. She went to the warehouse and pulled one out of the box, amazed at how light the bike was. So she bought it. Imagine my surprise when I see that her fillet-brazed bike also has the strange lugged head tube and flat black paint. She also has the red seat tube detail and the same chrome steel fork, although her fork was painted white on top. What are the chances I would see someone walking another Comb Company Lambert on a road I rarely take?
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Fast forward a bit and the same friend gave me another Lambert parts bike with the same hybrid construction, steel fork and black paint. That makes three… obviously my Lambert seller knew what he was talking about. So what’s the story? Anyone know how & why all these bikes got butchered? My guess is that Lambert had a batch of damaged frames that were hastily repaired and sold to this wholesaler. What do you say?
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That's a pretty interesting and weird story to me (a sorta-Lambert-o-phile.) Mine's one of the boring early ones where everything is lugged construction and standard English threaded parts. A friend of mine has and orange and white fillet brazed one from a few years later that failed at the head tube, and was crudely welded back together by a local machine shop. Looks like the problem was endemic.

Apparently those English braziers didn't have quite the touch of the more experienced Schwinn crew back in Chicago.

I've read about these frames failing at the seat tube/BB shell junction (just like the Mississippi Schwinn in my avatar), but not at the head tube. The fillets up front are pretty generous on my Viscount, but the ones at the bottom are pretty skimpy. I'm debating having a frame shop add more brass down there after I have the frame media-blasted.

I doubt your lugged Lambert is boring. Does it have the same lightweight tubing? How about all the Lambert-branded bits (other than the crankset)?

I have one of the lugged Lambert frames. At one point I had it built up with all the Lambert/Viscount parts I could find (bar and stem, brake calipers and levers, crank and pedals, a few other pieces I think. One by one they all came off and were replaced by less funky stuff (so: if anyone wants this stuff, a pm is in order).

The frame is nice, lightweight and stiff. The original paint is a cherry red, which is tough and shiny though it has its flaws. The head tube and a panel on the seat were originally painted white over the red, and the white was terrible. It just flaked off. I eventually removed all the white, leaving the frame red. With a chrome Electra Ticino fork and my own bogus "Lambert" decals, the bike looks quite nice now, IMHO, though it's unquestionably a rider (it's done three centuries so far this year).

It has a Sturmey Archer S3X hub. Coincidentally I think two other forum members have Lambert/Viscount bikes set up this way.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-V...2010.20.17.jpg

Actually, it's led a pretty interesting life so far, and continues to get exciting new stuff thrown at it on a regular basis. And the 1027 labeled tubing makes it pretty light. But I never had any of the original Lambert bits; having purchased it as a frameset with deathfork-on-the-side.

very nice!!!

See, I just knew it wasn't boring! This seems to be another one of those marques with versatility limited only by imagination. Unique enough to make your own, but not so rare that you'll face a fatwa for doing it.