My 1973 Jack Taylor Tourist

Posted on February 21, 2015 by Nola Wilken

I seem to be on a 70’s Brit-bike craze! But it has lasted a while, as I have had this Jack Taylor Tourist Mixte for about 8 years. At the time I purchased it from Hilary Stone, he thought it was a 1960s model. After the bike safely made its crossing over the Atlantic, I disassembled it for cleaning and was able to read the matching serial numbers at both the rear dropout and the steerer tube more clearly, and have now dated this bike to 1973.

The build quality of this bike is classic Taylor brothers, with incredibly smooth brazing at all the joints. It is made, of course, with Reynolds 531 double butted tubing, and features Campagnolo dropouts, hand-hammered fenders, through-the-frame dynamo wiring, and those beautiful and colorful Jack Taylor logos. The Taylor brothers followed the practice of building their mixte frames with a single sloping standard diameter top tube fillet brazed at the seat tube with the two extra mixte stays of fairly narrow diameter. Having ridden all kinds of mixte frames, I have to say that this method is likely not the most ideal in terms of adequate frame stiffness. On this bike, the head tube feels somewhat independent from the rest of the bike. Mixte frames are best, in my opinion, when built with twin lateral sloping down tubes that extend to the rear dropouts, or if a single tube is used, extending the mixte stays beyond the seat tube also helps keep the frame adequately stiff, such as this design by Peter Weigle.

This is one of the few bikes I have ever ridden that was geared too low for me. It was set up with a Stronglight 99 crankset carrying a single drilled 36 tooth ring (pictured first), mated to a Sachs-Fitchel Orbit 2 speed hybrid hub with a 6 speed cassette ranging from 14 to 28 teeth. The hybrid internal hub is meant to take the place of the front derailleur (or add to it, if you are Sheldon Brown and want 63 gears), and it provides a direct drive, and one lower gear that is about 25% lower than the direct drive. So, with this set-up, the lowest gear was around 24 gear inches – wow! Unfortunately, the gearing topped out at 65 gear inches, and that meant that I didn’t have much in the way of a comfortable cruising gear, much less any way to power up to speed on a sprint. Since I didn’t want to change out the Stronglight 99 crank, I replaced the 36 tooth ring with a 38, (pictured second), and that helped a bit. Even so, I rarely engage the lower internal hub gear, as I really don’t need it, so I ride this bike as a 6 speed, for the most part.

The photo above shows its original configuration as shipped, but it is very likely that the Sachs Orbit hub set up was not part of the original build, but was added later. I don’t think these hubs were made until the 1980’s, and the 27 inch (yes, not 700c) rims do not match, with the rear being a Weinmann and the front rim remaining unbranded and probably the original wheel built by Ken Taylor.

This is one big mixte! The seat tube measures 54cm and the effective top tube length is a whopping 55cm. With its large wheels and big frame, it cuts an imposing shadow. The bike came equipped with no-rise French-sized mustache bars shimmed into a Milremo stem.

So, I changed out the bars and stem to bring them closer to me using a tall no name stem with very little reach and some Soma Mustache bars. I also swapped out the Madison leather saddle, which was pretty worn, with the Ideale Model 75 saddle pictured above. Unfortunately, while looking very pretty, this leather saddle, though vintage, is still hard as a rock and needs some breaking in. Here are photos of the rest of the components:

Suntour V-GT rear derailleur

Mafac cantilevers, of course.

Milremo front hub with very stylish wingnuts.

Soubitez dynamo

Constructeur racks front and rear, mounted only to the fenders.

Seat stay brazing, nice and simple. The paint now looks great after weeks and weeks of cleaning and polishing.

This photo was taken before cleaning and polishing.

Original French mustache bars. SunTour Stem mounted shifters.

Another broken reflector

She’s a beauty! I commuted on this bike for a few years, but haven’t ridden it much lately, as I still have not made ergonomic peace with it. With spring coming, I think I will dust if off and see if I can’t make this ride a bit more comfortable for me.

A 1972 Mercian

Posted on February 7, 2015 by Nola Wilken

I recently purchased this Mercian on eBay. The seller described it as a 1960’s model, but with its Shimano dropouts, I suspected it was actually made a bit later.

The bottom bracket shell seems to indicate this is a 1972 model. A name appears to be etched above the serial number, but I can’t quite make it out. Perhaps this was the owner’s name. Having looked through the available Mercian catalogs on-line, and after taking frame measurements, I still don’t quite know what model this is.

However, given that it has decent length chain stays (44mm), and single eyelets front and rear, it is possible that this is the Campionissimo or Olympic model, off the shelf frames designed for light touring and randonneuring, but with no customizing available except choosing the color.

The lugs are ornate, and unusually shaped, although not a great deal of time was spent filing them. The frame is equipped with pump pegs and a full set of cable stops. The pump pegs are mounted slightly off center below the top tube, to prevent interference with the cable stops also mounted slightly off center on the opposite side.

I measured the frame and took some preliminary angle readings. It is a 49 cm x 51 cm frame (or, speaking British, a 20 inch frame – which the company measures center to top). The angles appear fairly steep, at about 74 degrees for both the head tube and seat tube. Of course, there is a margin of error using this method, and once the bike is built I will re-measure the angles using a level to correct for errors. I also checked brake reach using 700c wheels (I think the frame was built for 27 inch wheels). It looks like I will need about 65 mm of brake reach to use 700c wheels with this frame – that is definitely doable.

However, the biggest challenge will be determining whether the paint damage and oxidation to the top tube will mean having to re-paint the frame, something I am loathe to do. If the paint damage is just at the surface level, and there’s no rust underneath, I’d like to preserve the beautiful patina of this nice Reynolds 531 hand built frame.

Thankfully, it was a rainy, stormy day today, not suited for riding. A perfect shop day. I got out my various cleaning products and began to experiment on the back side of the fork legs, so that if I did something irretrievably bad, it would not be so visible. As it turned out, the most effective product was an automotive paint cleaning compound. Applied vigorously, and polished vigorously afterwards, this product was best at removing the years of neglect. I was worried about taking off too much paint however, and I only gently cleaned the Mercian logos. I definitely did not want to damage these as they were all in great condition. The photos above show the frame after several hours of cleaning and polishing – there is a definite improvement! That gave me the impetus to start working on the top tube. I figured that no matter how hard I rubbed, I couldn’t make it worse than it already was. I really wanted to see what the damage looked like underneath the oxidized paint.

The good news is that underneath the oxidation was nice silver-colored steel, with no rust visible at all. The bad news is that the top tube looks pretty funky, still. I will probably clean it up a bit more and then apply some clear paint to protect the exposed areas. After more cleaning, I will also apply many coats of wax to the entire frame, just to make sure that it remains protected in the elements. You’ll note from the above photo that I also removed the California bike license tag. While I usually keep these kinds of artifacts intact, this one really detracted from its appearance. Underneath was the original frame color – a very vibrant red. Well, now the bike is a very cool orange color!

It’s now time to start thinking about the components. Since the frame has such a vintage look, I think it would be best to build it up with period components. Fortunately, the old Mercian catalogs will provide a lot of information about how these machines were typically configured. I have these GB 88 brakes which would be from the period, and which have just the right amount of brake reach. My crankset collection includes two Stronglight candidates. The crankset at the left is a Spidel/Stronglight set from the 80’s – meant to be a copy of a Campy Super Record Crankset, and the one at the right is a 1970’s model with the star shaped spider that I love. I will probably go with the more vintage look. The frameset came shipped with a TDC headset, probably orginal, and a Sugino bottom bracket, which may or may not be original. By this time, Shimano and other Japanese components were beginning to be considered on par with the best French, British and Italian component makers of the time.

I have been wanting to find the right home for this beautiful Dura Ace high flange front hub with its smooth as butter cups and cones. It is laced to a 700c Araya rim. I might decide to use an unusual rear hub, such as a 2 x 6 Sachs-Fitchel hub, or even a Sturmey Archer, in keeping with its British heritage. That is part of the fun – envisioning the many interesting ways this frame can be configured. I look forward to riding it and getting this great old frame back out on the road.

Goodbye, Little ALAN

Posted on November 8, 2014 by Nola Wilken

I have enjoyed riding around on this tiny ALAN cyclocross bike. I originally purchased it several years ago for a family member who is about 5′ tall on a good day. She had been riding a small framed newer Trek with 700c wheels, and while the Trek has nice components, the geometry is pretty awful. But, many shorter riders have never experienced anything different, because the cycling industry has not met their needs.

Enter the ALAN. It was designed around 24 ” wheels, with a 48 x 48 cm frame. When I spotted it on eBay it looked like this:

Those are 170 mm Dura Ace cranks – on a bike with a 24 cm bottom bracket height. Needless to say, there is no way that you would pedal through corners on this configuration. So, I began the process of modifying the bike, and at first I tried this configuration:

I changed out the crankset for a single 152 mm 52T vintage crank. Unfortunately, this just did not provide the right gearing for the bike. So, I reconsidered the whole build. The deep drop Cinelli bars made no sense for a small rider with short arms. The downtube shifters were also a bit of a reach. That made me think that a city-type build might be best for this bike. So, I came up with this set-up using a double 152 mm 50/39 Sugino crankset. I replaced the rear Dura Ace derailleur with a Shimano Deore XT long cage, but kept the Dura Ace front derailleur, Dura Ace headset, and Dura Ace bottom bracket. I used some vintage upright bars with a Shimano 7 speed index system.

And this is how I rode around on this bike for the last 2 years (test riding is very time-consuming). Finally though, my thoroughly enjoyable test riding has come to an end. So, I needed to really rethink how the new rider would use this bike, as well as how her small size would effect the choices I made. Since she is used to a road bike configuration, I decided to replace the city bars and shifters with a narrow SR Randonneur bar, bar end shifters (for an easy reach), and these beautiful Modelo drilled levers, which have very small hoods and a short reach to the levers.

I kept the rest of the bike pretty much the same – here are some photos of its features:

Dura Ace calipers

ALAN logo

Beautiful engraving on the ALAN head lugs, Dura Ace headset

Shimano Deore XT rear derailleur

American Classic 25mm seatpost

Sugino 50/39 crankset with 152 mm arms

Dura Ace front derailleur

Shimano 600 tri-color front and rear hubs on Mavic 24″ Open 4 CD rims

If you haven’t ridden an ALAN before, you are in for a treat. The frame is very comfortable, and hill climbing is a breeze. The aluminum tubes are screwed and glued into beautiful stainless steel lugs. This little bike weighs in at 19 lbs! I used this bike often for my daily Pdx commutes – what a joy. The tiny wheels make for quick acceleration. It has been one of the best city bikes I have ridden.

There were some challenges in setting up the bike. The very short chainstays mean that it is not possible to select certain gearing configurations – namely the biggest ring on the biggest cog and vice versa. But that is a normal limitation on many bikes. Also, while I agree with most of the frame geometry decisions on this bike, I am puzzled by the amount of bottom bracket drop selected. It would have been easy to build the bike with less drop, and that would make it more feasible to use a longer crankset without worrying about pedal strikes while cornering.

Here is the bike now, ready for its transport to Central Oregon where I hope it will be well-loved and well-ridden. The seat post and stem height are still set up for my size, showing how small this bike really is, given that I am 5’4″. I’ll be test-riding it for a few more weeks to make sure everything is just right, and then it will be time to say good-bye to this wonderful machine. It is a rare bike, and a great testament to the ALAN company’s frame building skills. Thank you for building this little bike – it is a treasure.

Restoring Vintage Bicycles from the Hand Built Era

Portland, Oregon, USA

Tag Archives: randonneur

My 1973 Jack Taylor Tourist

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A 1972 Mercian

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Goodbye, Little ALAN

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