My Pat Hanlon

[Mole]

Thanks for your reply. That's a helpful insight. In your opinion, do you think it might be a 1960s frame possibly repurposed in the 1970s?

 

[Midlife]

I'm a child of the 70's and frames like that were usually made prior to that. "Road Path" with track ends plus mudguards were often replaced by winter training bikes that had the luxury of gears. Still plenty used fixed in the winter but mainly old school lol

 

[Mole]

Great, thanks for your reply. I was born in 1969 so I didn't get going until the early 1980s. I was saving for a Pat Hanlon but I hadn't enough money and wasn't quite fully grown when she retired and went to Spain. The chap I bought it from was in Essex, in his mid 70s at the time and used to race in the 1950s and 1960s, and he said the frame was probably from the 1960s even though the badge says N13. Looking online the Road Path frames seem to be 1950s. I think it is all beginning to make sense now.

 

[Mole]

I checked the dropout closely and it looks like the hanger was welded on some time after.

 

[Mole]

And re-read the Classic LW site under 'further information' it says that early frames had 2, 3 or 4 digit numbers. And the contribution by Griff King-Spooner says he had number 259 as a used Christmas present in 1962.

 

[torqueless]

if it has Nervex lugs

It does- as far as I can see, anyway.
That's a very close clearance rear brake bridge for an early sixties road frame, or even a road/path frame- it might've been repositioned at some time ? or it could've started out as a track frame. I don't know if those wheels are 700c or 27" ? Those brakes look to be Weinmann 500s and the blocks are right at the top of the stirrups. I don't know if anyone would've been building like that in the early sixties? Maybe. Iirc, Harry Quinn was doing close clearance/short wheelbase TT frames some years before their seventies heyday..

 

[Mole]

Thanks! I searched the internet for Nervex, they all look like the Professional model including BB.

It has Weinmann concave 27" on it. Not sure on the brakes, I'll take a look. I guess it will take 700c without a problem. Tubulars were always 700c?

 

[Mole]

It could have been a track frame, but the mudguard eyelets perhaps point to it being a 'Road Path' frame as another poster said?

 

[torqueless]

Yes that's the point. As far as I'm aware, prior to Campag Record brakes in the late sixties, most brakesets had a longer reach brake at the rear, and most road going frames would have been built to accommodate it. A road/path frame would usually have been expected to be able to accommodate mudguards too. Your frame has the mudguard eyes, but lacks the bridge/crown clearances you'd expect to accompany them, so it could be either a road geometry/clearances ten+ years ahead of its time, or a track frame modified for road use ten+ years after it was first built.

 

[Mole]

Aha, interesting. Thank you for the insight. If it were a track bike it would run tubulars, right? And tubulars have always been 700c?

Here are some photos of the brakes. I know nothing about their age.