Puch Touring light roadster - 3 speed rat bike.

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SkipdiverJohn

Deplorable Brexiteer
Location
London
This, and another similarly distressed looking Halfords own brand, came my way recently. It's a 22" frame Austrian-built Puch Touring that dates from around 1973/74 and has been laid up out of use for over 40 years. Just a cheap, everyday utility machine originally aimed at low-budget customers who would not, or could not, stump up the higher price of a similar Raleigh. The original tyres were of course totally flat, so were pumped up and actually held air and didn't split or explode! Gears and brakes needed some tinkering to get them freed off and working properly, but despite the rusty, shabby appearance, the bike actually rides very nicely indeed and appears to have little mechanical wear.

PUCH AGAINST WALL.jpg


PUCH AT GATE (2).jpg


I had just planned to give it a brief shakedown road test before taking my trusty Raleigh Pioneer out for my normal weekend ride, but it goes so well I ended up leaving the Pioneer indoors and did at least 20 miles this morning on the Puch. I'd forgotten how much fun a plain old 3-speed can be to ride, as the relaxed frame geometry soaks up the bumps and remains stable on poor surfaces. The 3-speed hub gears are so user-friendly to use. Derailleur gear trains are a real pain for getting clogged full of grass & other plant life if you ride them away from tarmac, no such hassles with a 3-speed hub. I can see me clocking up quite a few miles on this for journeys that don't involve too many gradients, although I will probably swap the 18T rear sprocket for a 19 or 20T just to lower the gearing a fraction to make top gear more useable.
 
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I like that a lot,... sprockets available on evil bay for three or four quid
 
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SkipdiverJohn

Deplorable Brexiteer
Location
London
I like that a lot,... sprockets available on evil bay for three or four quid

The low-res ancient mobile phone camera does flatter it somewhat, if I'm honest. Up close in real life it looks worse than at a distance. It's gone well past the "patina" stage, it's just plain ratty. The duct taped saddle is my most horrid looking one off an old Apollo MTB, but it's strangely comfortable - whereas the original wide roadster mattress saddle would not suit me for more than a few miles at a time.
I've already been looking at the SA hub gear sprockets on eBay, as you say they aren't silly money. Might get a 19T and a 20T and try out both. I don't want to radically alter the way it feels though, so it'll probably be a case of just chipping a handful of gear inches off. I don't need to create a hill climber, I can always use my 18 speed hybrid for the more demanding stuff.
 
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SkipdiverJohn

Deplorable Brexiteer
Location
London
don't forget you need to lengthen/ or fit a new chain

Yes, good point. I might get away with a 1T increase by taking up slack and moving the wheel in the dropouts, but if I went to a 20T it would definitely be too short. Will get a chain anyway, even if I don't need to use it, a spare is always useful. I'll also do a check of the Halfords 3 speed that I'm going to strip as a parts donor, and see how long that is and how worn. It may have a 48T chainring on the front rather than the 46T on the Puch.
 

midlife

Guru
I think Wiggle sell 1/8th chains for £3.99 so might be easier to buy a new one :smile: not sure if the Halfords and Puch chainset will be compatible.

Metallic green an unusual colour for Puch :smile:
 
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SkipdiverJohn

Deplorable Brexiteer
Location
London
Metallic green an unusual colour for Puch :smile:

I noticed you mentioned elsewhere Purple was a favourite colour of theirs.

My Elegance is Blue, and as you can see the Touring is green (where it isn't rust!), and was listed as this colour in the Recommended Bicycles section of my 1979 edition of "Richards Bicycle Book". Interestingly the other light roadsters recommended as being worth buying were the Hercules Balmoral, Raleigh Wayfarer, Raleigh Esquire, and Puch Elegance. No doubt you will also be familiar with all of these, as am I. When I bought my Elegance it was a toss-up between that and a Wayfarer, but the Puch was on sale at the time and substantially cheaper! I should really have bought the Raleigh though...
 
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midlife

Guru
Blimey those names bring back some memories, I have a couple of Ballantine's books on my eBay watch list :smile:

As Hull was a fishing port we stocked as few green bikes as possible as the colour was unlucky lol. We also chose colours that looked good in the bright shop lights and in the sun shining through nthe windows. All our new bikes were cleaned with car wax and metallic / flamboyant / chrome all helped sell. As did the Raleigh colours for the Europa !

The Esquire came in a metallic champagne as did the Misty which helped them sell. The Wayfarer was a real bread and butter bike, stocked in plain blue mostly and your Elegance would have looked a lot better in its metallic and strangely not a whole lot different to the Wayfarer. The Puch Prima was the bike that undercut Raleigh the most lol
 

Seleucid

Regular
Nice to see a Puch being used. I have three, all bought cheaply, and all ride nicely. Must confess I have taken useful parts from frames that were too small or beyond help.
 
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SkipdiverJohn

Deplorable Brexiteer
Location
London
Nice to see a Puch being used. I have three, all bought cheaply, and all ride nicely. Must confess I have taken useful parts from frames that were too small or beyond help.

Salvaging old junk bikes and stripping all the useful parts off them before chucking the leftovers in the scrap metal is my main way of obtaining spares, especially 26" rigid MTB stuff. It cuts down on unnecessary waste and resource use as well as costing me peanuts.
A friend of mine still has an old 10-speed Puch drop bar machine he got secondhand for college well over 30 years ago and admitted to me the other week its actually his favourite out of several bikes despite only being a low-end model! Seems bike price doesn't always directly relate to enjoyment factor.
 

Gravity Aided

Legendary Member
Location
Land of Lincoln
I had one once, the large department store Sears Roebuck and Company sold them over here under their name, as well as a Columbia three speed. The Puch was a buy-up version, and it was a far better ride, having had both. The way you knew it was a Puch was that the headbadge said "Made in Austria" at the bottom, comme ca.(Pic from the web)
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Cycleops

Legendary Member
Location
Accra, Ghana
They might have to re write the Chuck Berry song:
They furnished off an apartment
With a two room Roebuck sale
The garage was crammed with
Puch Bicycles and ginger ale
But when Pierre found work
The little money comin' worked out well
"C'est la vie", say the old folks
It goes to show you never can tell
 
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