Bikes I have owned

Websters on the web
	Bikes past A selection of photos of bikes I have had the pleasure to have owned, in no particular order. All the images on the right are large images, just in case you want to right click and view image for a closer look. Bob Jackson Olympus Into the modern world with this Bob Jackson Olympus. I built it from scratch, so it has my favourite bits - Stronglight Impact chainset, Campy ergo levers (here the Xenon's I bought for it, not realising that front on Xenon 9s is indexed rather than ratchet - I have since swapped for the Veloce ones on the Donohue (below). Sora at the back (now with JTek shiftmate for perfect indexing. Donohue Brilliant lightwight (22lbs) 531 steel frame (millenium edition) given to me by a friend - fortunately for me the seat post was seized at exactly my height so no need for potentially damaging attempts to remove it. I wanted a bit of luggage space, hence the removeable bottle cage storage. Airnimal Chameleon This Airnimal Chameleon took over from my Brompton as a more speedy but less foldable folding bike. Better for longer trips than a Brompton, easy to transport in the car boot, but definitely not for commuting....which is what I had the Brompton for originally before coinverting it. Note that this was originally the straight bar version which I have converted to drops as the price difference was huge and the drop version had a carbon fork, which I didn't think was a good idea on a folder. Dawes Lightweight I found this, dismantled, in a store cupboard at work. After asking around I found the owner who accepted an offer of £75 for it. This was soon justified when I sold the rather sloppy Campagnolo Rally deraileur on the back for £26 - my first venture into e-bay. Like me this bike is 1960's vingtage. I cycled it as shown for a few years before converting to fixed gear for a while. I sold it to make space in the garage for more than I originally paid - that has to be good value for money. The original owner said his dad had built it from parts in the 1960's and it may not even be a real Dawes, despite the decals. You can see from the lug work that it is a quality machine, though. Claud Butler Carabo My second generation mountain bike. I find real off-roading a bit jarring on the back these days, but this bike did me proud as a forray into front suspension mountain biking, taking over from my first generation "ATB - all terrain bike" as the Dawes Wildcat was described before the term "mountain bike" had become the standard description for this sort of mount. I have given up serious mountain biking, so this bike is now relegated to load carrier witha lage capacity paniers and luggage trailer - enough to bring the wekly shop home from the supermarket. It also sees duty with Scwalbe marathon winter studded tyres on my commute to work in icy weather. Eclipse I refer to this as "eclipse" because it has this stamped on the top of the seat stays. It is made of Tange 900 double butted tubing, but had no makers decals when I bought it from Warlands Cyles in Oxford for £100. I soon discovered that it's previous owner had worked it hard, leaving most of the bearings shot and in need of replacement - my first introduction to cartridge bottom brackets, what a brilliant invention! The bike served me well as a lightweight tourer for a long time before taking over as my fixed wheel bike when I sold the Dawes Lightweight - I just swapped over the back wheel and removed the smaller chainring. Majestic I bought this when I went into a bike shop to pick up a wheel they were building for me. It grabbed my attention because it matched my tandem and because I had ridden a slightly later model for a couple of years in the 1980s, lent to me by my rather taller brother when he was abroad for a couple of years. At 24" frame this was the same size, by modern standards enormous, but by the old school mantra of "get a size as big as will comfortably fit" it was just the job. At £100 it turned out to be an absolute bargain. The headset was "notched" and needed replacing, but everyting else was perfect. I owned this bike for ten years from 2002-2012 before selling it on to make room for the Olympus. It covered 29,000 miles in this time - you can get more details on this page which I created to give selling details. Sardar I wanted a 26" wheel tourer to take over from the Wildcat once it had been written off in a collision. This seemed ideal, but I just couldn't get on with the Tiagra STi shifters - it just seemed like you needed enormous hands to use the things. My next experience with such things was with veloce ergo power shifters - its amazing how two companies could make ostensibly similar products so different in comfort and usability. This bike has done me proud on many tours and been a test bed for components such as Pantour suspension front hub, Avid BB disc brakes, 12V strobe lights, magura hydraulic beakes and a host of other stuff. It now has Dura Ace downtube shifters, Tektro CR-720 brakes and my favourite 50-38 stronglight chainset and is still going strong after 30,000+ miles. Wildcat This was my first forray into off-road cycling. An "ATB" or all-terrain bicycle is how this bike was styled when I bought it. The oversized tyres and hugely wide bars (not present in this photo), not to mention the bright yellow paint job made it eye catching for its day. It went through many incarnations with me, switching to narrower bars then drops. It accompanied me on the hardest ride I have ever done from Windermere across Wrynose and Hardknott passes to Grage over Sands then back (over the moors, but still hard riding). It was a sad day when a collision with a free running dog catapulted me through the air and bent the top and down tube by 5-10 degrees. Amazingly the wheels were unscathed, but the ride after that was somewhat crabby, so it had to go for scrap. A much missed old friend. Brompton Bromptons - amazing little bicycles. I picked this one up for £60 from Reg Taylor cycles in Oxford. The AW3 hub was knackered, so he offered to replace the insides for nothing - I insisted on paying a contribution, it was worth it to learn how to service AW3 hub, I took the old mechanism away to tinker with - I had previously viewed hub gears as a bit of a black art. I bought it for commuting, but for a while I regularly took it abroad, building it by degrees into a machine capable of taking on the Swiss alps. These trips left lots of fond memories and curiosity about the Brompton made me lots of friends - when I no longer needed to use it for commuting I moved up to an Airnimal Chameleon as my folder. But the Brompton held surprises to the last, making £260 at auction on e-bay. I reckon I spent another £450 on it over its time with me, so I can't claim a profit, but I wish my car were as good in maintaining its value. Claud Butler Majestic Tandem This was our main form of transport for about 5 years and did stirling service, however it gradually got used less and less, eventually restricted to an annual treaure hunt ride at work. It found a very good home with someone who restored it to pristine condition before venturing on a cycle tour of France (I know this because he subsequently sold it on e-bay when it really looked immaculate). Note that the stoker bars are the originals from the Wildcat but with 3" cut off each side (they started hugely wide). Sebring International (no photo) I got this to go to school on at the age of 12 in 1975. It was my first bike with gears - before I had a single speed when that wasn't a fashion statement but a fact of life. So a ten speed bike was every boy's dream. This one was great for sprinting the 4 miles from school in time to catch the last over bfore tea in the test match on the telly, though my memories of how difficult it was to repair stick with me - not like modern bikes where one allen key fits all, brakes are adjustable (and effective), wheels don't rust, cotter pins don't exist and bottom brakets don't spill out quarter inch ball bearings (assuming you don't break your pin spanner trying to loosen them in the first place), quill stems don't rust solid....things have definitely moved forward, though fashion driven annual updates are one thing that isn't so welcome (square taper definitely beats cotter pinned BB all ends up - but the rest is just fashion)