Holdsworth Hardtrack

[drcarlos]

Wow, it's been a long time since I've seen one of these. I had one new in 1989 (got it cheap as a last season mark down, for a little over £300 which was a bargain for a Deore equipped bike) in a similar size . From memory it's tig welded 4130 DB Cro-mo, not the more common Holdsworth lugged 531. It was actually quite a decent spec and quite progressive for 1988 when they came out with a T-bone stem and decent geometry. It's funny I don't remember mine being branded as a Hardtrack but as you can see in the pic below it was.
Here it is with me BITD in 1990 at the top of pen-y-fan.


Did a lot of riding on this until I bought a 1991 Rockhopper Comp frame and forks and swapped a lot of the parts to this frame and sold it to a mate (who incidentally fitted my new gas cooker last week).

Carl.

 

[drcarlos]

Links to the first set of pics appear dead, is it a small frame size a gate size too?

Do they also both have the brown tinted Exage Mountain hubs too? Holdsworth fitted these to mine and I can also see the Mountain headset on Dans bike too, both hubs and headset were fitted to save money I bet, but they weren't bad parts though.

I would bet both these bikes were originally supplied by Berkshire Cycles too.

Carl.

 

[dan singh]

The links probably contained these pictures - looks the same size..
http://www.retrobike.co.uk/gallery2/v/u ... 3.JPG.html

I have shiny M451 hubs on mine and you are quite right - it came from the Crowthorne branch of Berkshire Cycles ! Did this shop have the entire stock??
It didn't travel very far, I collected it some 5 miles from there.

 

[drcarlos]

451 are Exage Mountain 6's Uniglide hubs, so it wasn't just mine then that didn't quite get full Deore then.
Berkshire Cycles were a local Falcon Group Cycles Dealer and they have a few of the higher end bikes from them including Claud Butler and Holdsworth. They also used to buy end of line bikes from the manufacturers and sell them discounted. I reckon they got all these large ones cheap and sold them on to suckers like my old man as this frame is too big for me now let alone as a 14 year old!
The bikes as a whole show how the MTB craze caught the UK makes off guard as they had to resort to buying far east made Cromoly frames off the peg instead of handbuilding lugged frames themselves to keep up with demand. I think this is better than anything Holdsworth UK would have built back then.

Carl.

 

[dan singh]

Some interesting info there.
The "Handbuilt in Britain" stickers are a bit cheeky as buyers would think they were getting something actally made over here rather than just assembled.

 

[drcarlos]

Saracen were another maker that used this trick, sourcing frames from the far east and hand building them up in the UK, I think the only Bikes that were made fully in the UK were the early Reynolds bikes. I agree though quite misleading, but it doesn't make them bad bikes though.

Carl.

 

[dan singh]

I have a couple of Saracen Tufftax as it happens, an 88 and an 89 plus a NOS frame. I was going to strip the Holdsworth to build up the frame but I can't bring myself to do that, the bike is just too good.

 

[TrevorKershaw]

Here are pics of my old Holdsworth Ultima in Reynolds 531 (or so the sticker said ). The frame was about 20/21 inches and weighed a ton. It was way too big for me, as I am 5' 8", but good to ride the 4 miles to and from work, then get on my Clockwork and shoot off to the hills.

Sorry for the quality as they are scans of pictures.

 

[Bpool77]

^^^i used to have one of them got on the never never from a catouloge traded it for a black and pink splatter fife mountain before I'd even paid for it

 

[dan singh]

Here are pics of my old Holdsworth Ultima in Reynolds 531 (or so the sticker said ). The frame was about 20/21 inches and weighed a ton. It was way too big for me, as I am 5' 8", but good to ride the 4 miles to and from work, then get on my Clockwork and shoot off to the hills.

Sorry for the quality as they are scans of pictures.

What happened to it?