Reynolds 753t Tubing

Matt_wood55

Senior Retro Guru
Yes, that's 't' not 'r'!!

I have just put a deposit down on a machine made from this tubing. It's the first time I have heard of it. A quick Google and it appears to be specialist track tubing (hence the 't') and double butted.

Does anyone else have any info? It's a TT bike I have bought, 1985 vintage.

Cheers
 
According to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, here's how 753T fits in -

753 - Heat-Treated Manganese-Molybdenum. The most exclusive tube set from Reynolds. Essentially 531 made with reduced wall thickness and heat treated to increase tensile strength. UTS: 1080-1280 MPa (70-83 Tsi, 157-186 ksi) Complete tube set of 11 tubes (Frame 8, Fork 3). 753 can only be lugged and fillet-brazed with an alloy of 56% silver below 700 degrees Celsius and sale is restricted only to approved builders certified by Reynolds
753ATB - Mountain, All terrain, Off road
753R - Road tubeset
753T - Track tubeset, thinner tubes for track use
753OS - Oversize tubeset
 
Blimey...........learn something new every day :)

Strange that they have thinner tubes for track use.......BITD track frames often had thicker tubes for rigidity.

Shaun
 
Reynolds introduced 753R and 753T, an imperial version of the original, metric 753 in 1983. 753R/T had different gauges, tube diameters and seat pin sizes to the original tubing etc. 753T was generally used for lighter needs such as time trials.

In fact, the original 753 had 2 different gauges but it was always just labelled as 753. The gauges were 801 and 803. Smaller frames had the lighter 801 with a seat pin size of 27.0 and larger frames had the heavier 803 gauge with seat pin size of 26.8

You can see I learnt a lot about 753 when I bought my TI Raleigh.
 
And it was March 1975 when they introduced it and the purple colour of the decal was the colour of the packet of biscuits eaten at the meeting.

653 was introduced as a mixture of 753 and 531 due to Eddy Merckx finding a full 753 frame to stiff for Paris-Roubaix.
 
There should be something more permanent about Reynolds tubes on here: as the subject has been discussed many times - 753 was offered, as already mentioned, in two principal types: R (for road) and T (for track), decals were available differentiating the two types.

There were two"special"531 tubesets*: firstly 531 Superlight which was superseded by 531 Professional. Old Ned mentions 653, this was a concept tubeset that effectively replaced the 531 Professional set.

Jon.

*there were, of course, many other 531 derivatives.
 
I don't remember 653 until the mid 80's, by which time Merckx had long retired, but maybe i'm wrong.

I thought the same about a track frame needing beefed up rather than slimmed down tubes, so I'm thinking this might have been for pursuiting rather than sprint type events
 
pigman":2belntaz said:
I don't remember 653 until the mid 80's, by which time Merckx had long retired, but maybe i'm wrong.

I thought the same about a track frame needing beefed up rather than slimmed down tubes, so I'm thinking this might have been for pursuiting rather than sprint type events

I think the 653 Merckx connection is a little misleading. It may very well be that a frameset was built for the great man using a mix of tubes (i.e 753 and 531), and this mix may very well have been released eventually as 653 (in 1986) many years after Eddy's retirement in 1978.

I agree with your comment about track and pursuiting.

Jon.
 

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