Bike repairs and the 1980s...

[Flick of the Elbow]

Agreed, modern bikes are too highly strung. I blame Shimano.

 

[Shut Up Legs]

Modern people are too highly strung.

 

[flyingfish]

Had this conversation in the pub the other night. My old Sun racer needed the brakes adjusting and the back tyre replacing now and then. Modern bikes have become much more precise but not sure if I could get up the hills with 5 gears now

 

[Drago]

Agreed, modern bikes are too highly strung. I blame Shimano.

But by heck are they good to ride!

 

[Hacienda71]

I remember having to replace tyres, normally rear ones back in the seventies and eighties as they had worn through to the canvas . As a lad one of the important things about riding was the ability to do a broadie aka slightly sideways on skid leaving a good amount of rubber on the pavement.

 

[raleighnut]

I remember having to replace tyres, normally rear ones back in the seventies and eighties as they had worn through to the canvas . As a lad one of the important things about riding was the ability to do a broadie aka slightly sideways on skid leaving a good amount of rubber on the pavement.

I had a bike with wide handlebars, a 26 inch 'block pattern' cyclocross rear tyre which was treated this way and also ridden round the rough tracks at the local quarry in 1975 ..................And the yanks claim to have invented MTBs, we all had bikes like that round our way.

 

[flyingfish]

Round my way some mates got moped handle bars on their bikes

 

[Drago]

Parisians are documents as having raced off road purpose built bikes with 650B tandem wheels as far back as the late 40's. The great Geoff Apps started to build his off road bikes in the 1960s.

The American claims about giving birth to the MTB are so mired in sheet that the likes of Joe Breeze are famed for giving differing dates for key.milestones as time goes by, and recently even claimed to have built his first MTB frame several years before he was documented as actually buying the materials to construct it.

Anyway, enough of my frothing at American claims to have stolen the Enigma and won the war in 1943. We too used to do broadies as a kid and I remember one deliciously horrifying moment when a friend of mine tried this on his Dads Holdsworth and the back wheel folded into an almost perfect right angle.

 

[Cp40Carl]

In 1975/6 I worked in the factory in Darlaston where Brown Brothers/Vindec bikes were manufactured and I can tell you that the OP is deluded as they were utter garbage by comparison with a 50s or 60s roadster..

No! This can't be true! That bike was the world to me!!!

 

[Drago]

They were made from melted down Nazi iron crosses. Pure essence of evil.

 

[raleighnut]

Parisians are documents as having raced off road purpose built bikes with 650B tandem wheels as far back as the late 40's. The great Geoff Apps started to build his off road bikes in the 1960s.

The American claims about giving birth to the MTB are so mired in sheet that the likes of Joe Breeze are famed for giving differing dates for key.milestones as time goes by, and recently even claimed to have built his first MTB frame several years before he was documented as actually buying the materials to construct it.

Anyway, enough of my frothing at American claims to have stolen the Enigma and won the war in 1943. We too used to do broadies as a kid and I remember one deliciously horrifying moment when a friend of mine tried this on his Dads Holdsworth and the back wheel folded into an almost perfect right angle.

I never tried it on Grahams (my cousin) Carlton which I used to borrow from 1976 and then got to keep it in 1980, it is still in my shed today ready to ride although it doesn't go out very often.

 

[Tail End Charlie]

My first cycle tour was when 15 in the Peak District, hostelling on a single speed. I'm pretty sure I didn't even carry a puncture kit and don't recall changing chains and the like.
Don't get me started on cotter pins though.

 

[Globalti]

We can't have carried puncture kits or pumps because I used to ride seven miles each morning and evening to labour in a family friend's garden: http://www.turnend.org.uk/ and on the way home one day I got a puncture and had to walk back to ask our friends to call my Mum with the Dormobile to pick me up.

 

[rebelpeter]

There were less punctures in them days as the council and farmers did not keep cutting the roadside hedges spreading thorns onto the roads, especially in rural areas as farmers did not get paid for keeping their hedgerows cut down as they do now...... plus tyres them were made from real rubber and much thicker too, i have a collection of vintage racing bikes and the tyres never need pumping up when left for long periods yet modern ones loose air if left too long.

 

[Smokin Joe]

I think there are some rose tinted glasses being worn here. I remember plenty of punctures both on my own bike and those of clubmates during a run. Old style bottom brackets were a pain in the arris needing regular adjustment and often poorly made cups broke up in no time. Don't get me started on headsets, they were a pain to install, needed regular adjustment and the lower race pitted in a relatively short time giving you indexed steering. I fitted Cane Creek integrated headsets to two bikes in 2005 and they were still running smoothly when I sold the machines seven years later, never having needed even a tweak.