i knew that Brown Brothers did a proper club lever racing steed under the vindec brand umbrella but had never seen one in the metal , then,, one popped up on eBay.uk , i had it , full 531 butted tube set with double taper pencil chain stays and pencil seat stays with old 'pre 1955' nervex lightweight lugs .the paint is horrid as someone has done a half arsed job of painting it, as can be seen in the pic above it was originally a very nice 'and common for the age', pale powder blue,
when it arrived i was a little disappointed as the seat lug was stretched a little more than i expected , the headtube was a little stretched too, i suspect the culprit to be the usual fitting of a Campagnolo headset at some point in its life , i came to this conclusion as every other headset 'Japanese or English' i tried in it just fell out , when i fitted a rough old 80's campag it was a press fit , more to do with the nervex lugs being a little too well reputed for stretching, along with their bottom brackets !! . these are minor issues that can be sorted , i will get a local frame builder to sort out an allen key type brazed on closure at the seat tube , as for the head tube i will flow a bit of silver solder around both upper and lower internal surfaces and then ream and face it to the correct size .
on the plus side i couldnt find any rust ! ,even inside the chainstays,seat tube and downtube ,shining a torch up into the tubes and all the steel is still gray and quite new looking , so i have a little work to do but due to its rarity and general condition i have held off from just painting and riding it, i want to get it in fine fettle and build it as a Ranonneur or Rando as some call them , audax is the popular term in the UK ,when it arrived i was a little disappointed as the seat lug was stretched a little more than i expected , the headtube was a little stretched too, i suspect the culprit to be the usual fitting of a Campagnolo headset at some point in its life , i came to this conclusion as every other headset 'Japanese or English' i tried in it just fell out , when i fitted a rough old 80's campag it was a press fit , more to do with the nervex lugs being a little too well reputed for stretching, along with their bottom brackets !! . these are minor issues that can be sorted , i will get a local frame builder to sort out an allen key type brazed on closure at the seat tube , as for the head tube i will flow a bit of silver solder around both upper and lower internal surfaces and then ream and face it to the correct size .
i would like to have cantilever bosses fitted but may just use centre pulls of some sort ,
my fixation with vindec bicycles started when i was about eight years old, my uncle had a good size bit of land over in fife and had quite a few old vindec girls 24" and 26" wheel roadsters , i spent many an hour ripping around on those bikes and even though the craftsmanship was rough ,those old bikes just kept on going , jumping ramps , doing drop offs of around two feet in height, over and over again and apart from the very slow punctures they all had i just couldnt break them,
the double taper pencil stays and cyclo rear dropout.
more soon
