Elsie the elswick

Your frame is one of the batch made under contract by the Miki factory in Japan going by the serial number. April 1983. The tubing is tange 5 and good build quality.
 
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Thanks for the info guys, slacker the courier bars idea ties in with date of the bike. Thanks for the info regarding frame Erskine, may I ask where you got your info from thanks. Would be v interested to build up a good idea about how when etc this bike was produced.
 
I picked up a similar frame from the Falcon stable of marques. The guys on here helped me identify it. The Falcon factory suffered a couple of fires and outsourced frames for a while from Japan. Japanese framemakers had a bit of a peak from late 70's to mid eighties before the yen crashed and manufacturing moved to Taiwan. In the states Japanese frames from this era are quite highly appreciated. M stands for Miki, 3 is the year of the decade and D is the 4th month.
 
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Although I’ve said the frame was heavy and not Reynolds 531 if you look at the shape, especially the tapering, of the seat stays you can see that some thought and care has gone into the design and manufacture.
 
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Right guys, I've been able to get to the bike quickly and check a few things, on the fork it indeed says tange, made in Japan 3C. Also frame with some bite (FD rear brake and bit of BB still attached it weighs in at just under 3kg.seat post is labelled as 26.0 and as far as the external diameter I can measure it at about 33mm.
For your info brakes are shimano tourney and the cranks sungio.
 
Tange 5 is a plain guage chromoly, sort of 501, but drawn not seamed and gives a nicer ride than 501. It's not light but would stand up to touring / commuting and do it very comfortably.
Tange prestige and tange 1 & 2 are the high end butted tubings , standing head to head with Reynolds and Columbus.
 
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To be honest goldie it's going through a bit of a journey, its new tyres n cables worked a treat briefly and all was fine until we had a little bit of a problem when a crank arm came off due to a lost screw. This lead to me having to dismantle and sort out the bottom bracket, where we stalled for a while as the drive side cup is stuck fast, it's now in the queue of jobs to get it taken to the in laws to strap in to the bench vice (we've tried several rounds of various lubricants and force etc) to get it removed so I can fully service the BB and get it back on the road. Will put up an update when it's built back uo
 
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So quick update, the original saddle that came with the bike was not comfy for me at all and so required a change. I had nicked a saddle from a mtb that wasn't doing anything for a while which worked but I managed to pick this up today
 

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