MCarruthers
Retro Newbie
Hi there,
I'm a brand new user to this forum but have recently fallen in love with old road bikes so would like to share my bike with you all! Now my bike knowledge is next to nothing however I wanted a bike to travel round uni and I needed a summer project so decided to look on eBay and this is what I found:
Now I'm not 100% sure what year it is but after a bit of googling it does seem like it's a Dawes Impulse which started production in 1988 it seems so around then I guess... The frame is Reynolds 531.
Here's the frame all dismantled. For some reason I only road this bike for about 5minutes, if that (considering this is my first road bike I was also a terrible rider), then started taking it all apart. Looking at it in this picture the paintjob actually looks pretty cool! But I didn't like it at the time, I'm going to say the mottled dragon skin effect looked worse in person..
As I wanted this to be a 'project' and I really didnt like the colour of this bike I decided I wanted to strip it. I used paint stripper and took off all the nibs I didn't want on the bike with a blow torch. I guess here I should state that I wanted this bike to either be a fixie or single speed as I love the simplicity of them (I don't know how well fixies/single speeds go down on this forum!).
I really liked the colour Old English White so I went for as close as I could find to that which was Leyland white in the end. Now stripping this thing was a big pain and a big learning process but was definitely worth it! I decided to change my brakes and pads to new ones as well so I fitted some Shimano tiagras on and I bought a Campagnolo mirage crank. Being a complete bike novice I'm hoping these two components are good ones and I think they are, they atleast seem well built. I bought new tires, chain and a singlespeed spacer/cog set as well so now all I had to do was put it together! Fixie turned out to be a bit expensive as I only really wanted a cheap bike for using round campus so decided to go for single speed in the end and travelling around uni I'm glad I did now!
Anyway here's my bike fully finished (bar bar tape)
I'm really proud of it and I'm loving riding it. I wrote a blog on it (http://www.krispyduck.co.uk/?page_id=369) as I went along so if you want a bit more detail or to laugh at a bike noob you can read that!
This is basically a 'Hi' to the forum and here's my bike!
Now what to do for my next bike project..
I'm a brand new user to this forum but have recently fallen in love with old road bikes so would like to share my bike with you all! Now my bike knowledge is next to nothing however I wanted a bike to travel round uni and I needed a summer project so decided to look on eBay and this is what I found:
Now I'm not 100% sure what year it is but after a bit of googling it does seem like it's a Dawes Impulse which started production in 1988 it seems so around then I guess... The frame is Reynolds 531.
Here's the frame all dismantled. For some reason I only road this bike for about 5minutes, if that (considering this is my first road bike I was also a terrible rider), then started taking it all apart. Looking at it in this picture the paintjob actually looks pretty cool! But I didn't like it at the time, I'm going to say the mottled dragon skin effect looked worse in person..
As I wanted this to be a 'project' and I really didnt like the colour of this bike I decided I wanted to strip it. I used paint stripper and took off all the nibs I didn't want on the bike with a blow torch. I guess here I should state that I wanted this bike to either be a fixie or single speed as I love the simplicity of them (I don't know how well fixies/single speeds go down on this forum!).
I really liked the colour Old English White so I went for as close as I could find to that which was Leyland white in the end. Now stripping this thing was a big pain and a big learning process but was definitely worth it! I decided to change my brakes and pads to new ones as well so I fitted some Shimano tiagras on and I bought a Campagnolo mirage crank. Being a complete bike novice I'm hoping these two components are good ones and I think they are, they atleast seem well built. I bought new tires, chain and a singlespeed spacer/cog set as well so now all I had to do was put it together! Fixie turned out to be a bit expensive as I only really wanted a cheap bike for using round campus so decided to go for single speed in the end and travelling around uni I'm glad I did now!
Anyway here's my bike fully finished (bar bar tape)
I'm really proud of it and I'm loving riding it. I wrote a blog on it (http://www.krispyduck.co.uk/?page_id=369) as I went along so if you want a bit more detail or to laugh at a bike noob you can read that!
This is basically a 'Hi' to the forum and here's my bike!
Now what to do for my next bike project..
