Mystery old-school flat-bar 5 speed.

[SkipdiverJohn]

I seem to have acquired an interesting, but anonymous old 5 speed, and I'm curious as to who might have made it and how old it is. I'll try to post some pics up tomorrow at work, but in the meantime I'll try to describe the features. Hopefully someone might have one the same and recognise the description.

Frame:- brazed & lugged 23" size gents, with approx. 22 1/4" TT length between head & seat tube centres. Head tube approx. 6 3/4" tall inside the bearing cups. Geometry looks quite old-school, with fairly slack angles, about 70 deg parallel. Rather like old frames @biggs682 has posted up on here. Head tube and seat tube lugs are semi-fancy, BB lug is plain. Paint is a mid-dark green, possibly Lincoln Green. The lugs have gold linings, including the BB one. Paint looks rather unusual, like it "glows" with a silvery sheen in certain light, almost as though the green was applied over something else and is slightly translucent. There are no decals, and no head badge, nor any obvious badge rivet holes in the head tube. There Is a serial number, stamped on the L/H side of the seatpost lug. It looks like it could be 66679 E, with the letter on it's own below the row of numbers. Forks are fully chromed, with braze on lamp boss, but I think they may not be original. There is a braze in gear cable guide on top of the R/H BB, and an unused braze-on boss on the L/H down tube, so it could be a 10-speed frame, or available as 5 or 10 speed.
No brake cable bosses, and the pump pegs are clamp-on ones on the seat tube, not braze-ons.
Gears:- Huret rear mech, with stem mount friction shifter. Rear cluster looks to be a 12-25, and front chainwheel is a 50T with cottered steel cranks.
Brakes are side pull alloy Weinmann model 810 on front and 734 on rear, roadster type levers. Rear brake cable fixed to top tube with 3 chromed spring steel clips, not bosses.
Wheels are a mixed pair, one rim dimpled one plain. Both 26" x 1 1/4" steel. Pressed silver metal mudguards fitted, not convinced they are original.
Seatpost is chromed steel and bars & stem are roadster-style flat bars. Saddle is a sprung wide roadster style Brooks - but not leather.
It's a curious-looking machine to my eyes, because of having flat bars combined with quite a close-ratio 5-speed, but of course it could have been cobbled together from several different bikes! It does feel quite light in weight though, considering it has steel rims and steel cranks, bars and seatpost. It's lighter than my 3-speed!

 

[raleighnut]

Pictures needed.

 

[biggs682]

@SkipdiverJohn a picture can paint a thousand words

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Pictures needed.

I appreciate, it's hard work guessing from a description only, so here are a few shots. Quality not brilliant due to age of mobile phone and lighting conditions, but here goes!

I was quite intrigued when I spotted this, because the frame looks nothing like anything of recent years, due to the geometry and I was also surprised to see the fully chromed forks on a flat-bar machine. I'm not 100% sure if the forks are more recent replacements though, as they don't have quite the same curvature as other old vintage frames, but the lamp boss suggests they are not exactly modern. What does the vintage & classic forum think?

 

[biggs682]

That frame number looks like a Raleigh one to me and agree re forks and the huge tyre clearance on the front

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Funnily enough, someone at work today said unprompted "that looks like an old Raleigh to me", but I've never seen one without a metal headbadge or the holes that the rivets came out of. I must admit, the frame geometry does look similar to a Raleigh Trent. Do the lugs look distinctive? Whilst not super-fancy they aren't just plain on the Top and Down tube end of the head lugs. Any idea of era? I'm thinking it has to be 1950's, just doesn't look at all modern. Seems very odd though to combine derailleur gears with flat bars and a mattress saddle, unless bits have been mixed and matched.

 

[Cycleops]

Its not a Trent or a Lenton. I'd say just about everything has been changed on it. More than that I don't know except its not sporty.

 

[classic33]

Same forks were available in the late 80's. So not a reasonable piece to use to age the frame.

Pictures of any marks on the bottom bracket/rear forks.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

except its not sporty.

I'm not so sure that it's just a roadster frame, even though it has relaxed angles. There is still the unexplained matter of the braze-on cable guide boss on the lower nearside of the downtube. That says to me the frame was built as a 10 speed or was available as a 10 speed option. Otherwise, surely you would only need one cable guide on the offside of the frame, to serve either a 3-speed hub or a rear derailleur mech.
The wheel sizes are not "roadster" either - you would expect to find either 26" x 1 3/8" or 28" x 1 1/2". This bike has 26 x 1 1/4" wheels, the rear one of which is clearly pretty old. The front I'm sure is a later fitment.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Same forks were available in the late 80's. So not a reasonable piece to use to age the frame.
Pictures of any marks on the bottom bracket/rear forks.

I suspect the forks may be replacements. The hooligans on my estate were riding around on DIY built stripped-down cowhorn-bar "tracker" bikes with chrome forks like those in the 70's if not slightly later.
I haven't noticed any stampings on the rear dropouts and there definitely isn't anything whatsoever on the underside of the BB - because the first thing I did was turn it upside down to look for its serial number, expecting it to be on the BB.

 

[classic33]

Three seperate sets of dies used to punch the number visible on the seatstay.

It was a ten speed at some stage, braze-ons visible on the frame. Odd cotterpins fitted, left and right side.

No marks on the rear of the seat tube?

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

No marks on the rear of the seat tube?

Haven't seen any, just the serial number ending with E stamped into the L/H seat lug.

 

[raleighnut]

It looks like something 'cobbled together' in the 70s to me too.

Good news is there's plenty of room for 700c wheels in there, might even stand a chance of fitting brakes then.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

It looks like something 'cobbled together' in the 70s to me too.

Good news is there's plenty of room for 700c wheels in there, might even stand a chance of fitting brakes then.

I'm sure it's been messed around with too. I'm not so sure about it being a Raleigh "family" frame now. All the catalogues I've looked at show them having brazed-on pump pegs on the downtube. My frame doesn't have these, just clamp-on pegs on the seat tube. The cable guide bosses on the R/H of the BB and L/H of the downtube suggest a 10-speed, yet the geometry is very relaxed. I'm now wondering if it was built by one of the smaller, less well known manufacturers.

I could fit larger wheels as there is plenty of fork clearance and it has long chainstays. I'd also be inclined to go for 700c for the better tyre choice over 27". The current wheels are in pretty poor condition, both rusty and two broken spokes in the rear one. Before I mess around with it, I'd really like to get to the bottom of who made it and what size wheels it should have though. I thought identification would be easy, but it's proving to be more difficult than I expected.

 

[Salar]

When I first seen the pics, the first thought that came to me was an old Carlton from the late 60's early 70s.