Show us yer old roadster...

[ajm]

Well if you're near Dingwall, and want to take the CWS out for a spin we could do a tea and cakes ride and avoid the hills.

Might take you up on that some day, I'm about 35 (car) mins north of Dingwall - never been cycling out that direction at all (mostly because I have a strange mental block on putting a bike into a car to go for a cycle somewhere else rather than just jumping on it and going!)

 

[epicyclo]

How far? It's not unknown for me to nip up to Tain for a tea and biccy ride on one of my old wrecks.

I'm looking for excuses to get more miles in. It helps if there's comestibles involved.

 

[RobMac]

How far? It's not unknown for me to nip up to Tain for a tea and biccy ride on one of my old classics.

I'm looking for excuses to get more miles in. It helps if there's comestibles involved.

 

[velomaniac]

Subtle rob, nearly missed the difference in the quote, but eventually i spotted the blue highlighting

 

[ajm]

How far? It's not unknown for me to nip up to Tain for a tea and biccy ride on one of my old wrecks. I'm looking for excuses to get more miles in. It helps if there's comestibles involved.

Tain is a 20 mile round trip for me, hopefully both I and the roadster would probably hold together that far (so long as there's not a hurricane blowing as there is today!)

I pulled it out of the shed today (it's not been used for probably 20 years or so), here it is;





Not exactly concours (wreck is definitely applicable here!) but it looks slightly less bad now after a quick rub down with some brasso, and with some air in the front tyre actually seems to ride quite nicely... it's so quiet even compared to my road bike, very civilised indeed!

Dad remembers buying it in 1960 from the Co-Op in Tain... wonder if there's a 1960 CWS catalogue / brochure anywhere online?

Must order some brake blocks and at least one tyre & tube now (that "solid" back tyre doesn't look too healthy, see the close-up in the album...

 

[epicyclo]

Tain is a 20 mile round trip for me, hopefully both I and the roadster would probably hold together that far (so long as there's not a hurricane blowing as there is today!)

...Dad remembers buying it in 1960 from the Co-Op in Tain... wonder if there's a 1960 CWS catalogue / brochure anywhere online?

Must order some brake blocks and at least one tyre & tube now (that "solid" back tyre doesn't look too healthy, see the close-up in the album...

Dornoch?

The odds are the chain etc is still all like new if your Dad oiled it. Well worth replacing the tyres and tubes. And all the bearings are easily and cheaply done with a bag of loose ball bearings. With a bit of rust on the rims, the brakes will probably work better than new.

For £30 you could have it running like a new bike on fresh rubber.

There's a 1963 catalogue for the CWS in the Veteran Cycle Club library. I downloaded it but it appears it's not an allowable file type (PDF) to attach to a message here.

 

[epicyclo]

Managed to extract this from the 1955 catalogue (not in 1963)

If you still have the original pump and saddlebag, look after them.

 

[ajm]

The odds are the chain etc is still all like new if your Dad oiled it. Well worth replacing the tyres and tubes. And all the bearings are easily and cheaply done with a bag of loose ball bearings. With a bit of rust on the rims, the brakes will probably work better than new. For £30 you could have it running like a new bike on fresh rubber.

Almost spot on - the combined order for a pair of Raleigh Record tyres, tubes (I love Woods valves, so simple and elegant a design) , rim tape and brake blocks was £26.94. The bearings all felt fine to me other than perhaps the pedal bearings which are a bit stiff - are they designed to be oiled or greased on these bikes? I haven't tried to get the pedals off at all, suspect it could be fun... hopefully they won't die catastrophically for a while at least, they're smooth and stiff-ish rather than rough and catching.

There's a 1963 catalogue for the CWS in the Veteran Cycle Club library. I downloaded it but it appears it's not an allowable file type (PDF) to attach to a message here.

That page from the 1955 catalogue is brilliant, thank you! It's amazing what's on the Internet. It's exactly that machine - sadly the "inflator" and touring bag are long gone, and I have a horrible, horrible feeling that the rusty ancient bike spanner I told my great aunt just to bin probably belonged to this bike... I think/hope I took the double-ended Whitworth spanner that was with it though, if not I have others (somewhere!)

One question that occurred... what do you do for water while riding these things? I don't fancy carrying a water bottle in a back pocket, is there any reasonably practical period solution or will I have to resort to a camelbak style device?

 

[epicyclo]

Old bike bearings were oiled, but there's no reason not to open them up and grease them. It's easy enough to dribble some oil through those pedals though.

I don't worry about water if the ride is less than 3-4 hours. Just fill up myself before going out. Otherwise a bottle in the saddlebag.

The pedals may be hard to get off because often there is not much room between the crank and the pedal. I ended up buying a pedal spanner thin enough for the job. Usual thing, give it a good dose of WD40 for a couple of days first.

 

[ajm]

Old bike bearings were oiled, but there's no reason not to open them up and grease them. It's easy enough to dribble some oil through those pedals though.

I love the "oilcan everywhere" approach that ruled in these days, I take it that's what the little hole in the pedal end cap is for then... think I'll give them a schoosh through with something to maybe blow a little bit of grime out first and then go for the oil. So much more convenient to just drip in some oil every week or two rather than having to pull it all apart every now and then to repack with grease...

I don't worry about water if the ride is less than 3-4 hours. Just fill up myself before going out. Otherwise a bottle in the saddlebag.

3-4 hours! The longest I ever seem to spend in the saddle these days is about half of that, and without water I'd feel like I was in East Africa, not Easter Ross! I think I need to work on my endurance a bit... or get a bigger saddlebag...