Holdsworth championship

[joehyde]

Hello, I recently just bought an old 1978 Holdsworth championship that the last owner made in to a singlespeed. I don't know if the frame is anything speacial but I liked it.
I wanted to see if anyone can help me find the original parts and weather it's worth restoring it back to original or I was going to update all the parts and make it a fixed bike.

I will try and get some pics uploaded

Thanks

 

[allenh]

Nice machine but it looks like the only original item is the frame itself.

I restored one last year and mine came without most of the original parts and wasn't even in it's original colour so it took a while to work out what it actually was.
I built mine up as close to original as I could and they are a pretty rare thing as they were only in the catalogue for a couple of years, they changed quite a bit over those years and yours like mine is a later one as it has top tube cable guides.

I don't suppose they are that desirable or valuable but that said you do see a good few low end gas pipe Raleigh's and Peugeot's selling for biggish numbers so I could be wrong on that. It depends what you are intending to use it for but it's a nice frame to ride so I think if I were doing mine again I might retromod it now to make it more usable.

The catalogues are available on the superb nkilgariff website on this link

Link to my rebuild here and link to the trying to work out what Holdsworth it was thread here

Hopefully those will give you some of the info you need

 

[joehyde]

Thank you Allen for all the information, your posts are really helpful.

I do want to use the bike every now and then so either geared or single speed. I see that Holdsworth do new grand sport parts, not sure weather they are worth looking at. Is there any parts you could recommend?

If you don't mind me asking, did you send it off to get resprayed, and how much?

Thanks

 

[allenh]

Thank you Allen for all the information, your posts are really helpful.

I do want to use the bike every now and then so either geared or single speed. I see that Holdsworth do new grand sport parts, not sure weather they are worth looking at. Is there any parts you could recommend?

If you don't mind me asking, did you send it off to get resprayed, and how much?

Thanks

I don't mind at all, no I painted it myself so the cost was my time, the paint and consumables.

The paint doesn't look too bad on yours so if it were mine I'd strip it, clean it and then decide whether you want a fixie or geared, my own rule is if it's got a mech hanger and or braze ons then it's geared as I think bikes with braze-ons just look odd as fixies but it's your bike so entirely up to you. Then collect the parts together you want and rebuild it.

The new parts with the Holdsworth name on are made by PlanetX as they hold the name and are really intended for the modern frames they produce so the sizes of bars and seat pins etc are wrong for an old steel frame but things like the saddles and cranks are very nice, I've used them on one of mine and they certainly look the part.

You should be able to pick up used parts quite cheaply at cycle jumbles or on here or sometimes on ebay and there's a lot of reasonable low to middling Shimano kit about that you could use to make a nice bike with.

As an example I'm doing that now with an old Raleigh Scorpio (thread here) and apart from the consumables like cables, chain and tyres etc, It's all just spare cheap bits but has gone together well.

 

[joehyde]

Cheers Allen.

I think I will try and clean it up and make it a geared bike. It has shimano exage motion brakes I might clean up and reuse for now, weinmann brake levers, the bb I think is original. Needs need set of wheels to.

With the metal parts like brakes and levers can they just be polished and put back on or do they need anything speacial done to them?