sjcprojects
Orange 🍊 Fan
I picked this up today from the friendly somewhat elderly chap who was selling it. He'd actually bought it exactly as it is not so long ago, but he now had mobility issues and he never got around to building it up. He said he'd grown up not far from the Mercian works in Derby, so he'd always wanted one. I guess in his case sadly he'd left that a bit too late, although I didn't sense he was too upset about that, thankfully.
I was surprised to see that rather than being black as it looked in the photos, it's actually a very typical 70s/80s metallic brown colour. That's what I get for buying something with only poorly lit photos on the listing. Luckily I don't really mind in this case, in fact I think it looks rather nice with the gold lug lining and decals. I think maybe I just bought this because I like those gold Mercian decals so much
. It does have rather more patina than I might have expected, but not too much, and it does sort of blend in with the brown.
Of course I'm already thinking about how this could be built up and if I had the bits I would do it now, but that would also involve stripping down another bike to make room for this, so it will have to wait for a while. In the meantime it'll be nice to longingly look at, at least
.
I was surprised to see that rather than being black as it looked in the photos, it's actually a very typical 70s/80s metallic brown colour. That's what I get for buying something with only poorly lit photos on the listing. Luckily I don't really mind in this case, in fact I think it looks rather nice with the gold lug lining and decals. I think maybe I just bought this because I like those gold Mercian decals so much
. It does have rather more patina than I might have expected, but not too much, and it does sort of blend in with the brown.Of course I'm already thinking about how this could be built up and if I had the bits I would do it now, but that would also involve stripping down another bike to make room for this, so it will have to wait for a while. In the meantime it'll be nice to longingly look at, at least
.
I'm not sure when any actual building will happen, but I have accumulated most of the parts already. I'm itching to get it done, but life may get in the way for a while.
