Committing forgery: A Faux Rudge Autocycle build.

[Intrepid Wheelwoman]

Tee hee, my lovely French steel mudguards have arrived. For some strange reason the parcel was misdirected to Australia, but even so I'm still impressed with how little time it's taken for them to get here. (Fancy thinking I was an Australian.....Grrrr..)

The mudguards are drilled for the earlier style of mounting that was more common prewar and in the early 1950's so I'm really delighted with them. The older mounting method is a lot more robust and looks properly classic which is going to be prefect for the Rudge.

 

[xseler]

I think I may know where there are some white tires.......I'll try to remember and check in a few days.

 

[truckd]

Just Browsing through yer thread and thought I'd say the bike is shaping up nicely! keep up the good work.

 

[Intrepid Wheelwoman]

Thank you gentlemen I'm very pleased with how this bike is coming together myself. When I first thought of putting a China Girl engine in a mixte frame and making the bike look like it was a classic from the 1950s I had my doubts, only it really does seem to be working out for me.

I discovered an ebay seller who has NOS skirt guards. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/190959254860?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

They're just basic and quite simple ones, but are genuine old stock from 20+ years ago. I've purchased one to try, but I may get more if it works out alright. With me wearing long skirts and owning lots of bikes I can't go wrong really.

 

[16v4nrbrgr]

This build is so awesome! I see a Raleigh road bike at the grocery store every week or so and think how nice it would be to have a motorbike like that with the twin upper tubes that look so elegant.

 

[Intrepid Wheelwoman]

Thanks 16v4nrbrgr

It is a little bit of a squeeze to get a China Girl to fit into a Mixte frame, but it is worth doing it.
When I was younger and into riding fast on skinny tyred 10 speeds I loved bikes with Mixte frames for their good handling and construction. Strange though that I don't have Mixte bike amongst my collection of old Roadie and Track bikes I have hanging up in the garage. One day perhaps.......

 

[Intrepid Wheelwoman]

Well tonight's workshop session was a bit of a shock; - my nice new steel mudguards wouldn't fit under the crown of a Rudge fork. I decided nothing for it, I was going to have to replace the Rudge fork with something else with a wider crown. Forks to suit that Mixte frame aren't something I'm exactly short of, but after looking over four metallic blue ones with badly damaged paint I decided that paint was out.

Amongst my stash of NOS parts I had a lovely chrome fork still in its wrappings that was a good quality make from the 1970's. If anything deserved that chrome fork I figured that my faux Rudge did.

Fitting it was a bit of a fiddle because the fork stem was deliberately made over length and needed to be cut to size. Then i had to hand file a locking tab notch into the cut down stem so the nice head set bearing assembly I wanted to use would fit.

Yes the English made front brake still fits. Yes the new mudguard now fits. Yay me!
Eventually I might do some clever pin-striping on the fork so it doesn't look so baldly chrome on the front of the bike, but that's something for later.

Something I kept from one of my old bikes was a pair of 'Britannia' lightweight celluloid mudguards from the 1950's. Being celluloid they were a cracked and broken mess, BUT all the mounting stays and hardware are nicely made and of good quality. My plan is to use all these parts to mount my new mudguards which should work out very nicely indeed.

 

[xseler]

My friend had already gotten rid of his white tires, however, I just found these on the net ----- 2 tires for $25US, and they ship worldwide.

http://www.junkyrustybikes.co/shop/26x1-3-8/white-26x1-3-8-duro-pair-of-tires/

Sorry, but good luck with your search!!

 

[fasteddy]

I.W.,

Looking very nice indeed. Always something isn't it and now it's the mud guards. Great to here that you found a solution.

Steve.

 

[Intrepid Wheelwoman]

My friend had already gotten rid of his white tires, however, I just found these on the net ----- 2 tires for $25US, and they ship worldwide.

http://www.junkyrustybikes.co/shop/26x1-3-8/white-26x1-3-8-duro-pair-of-tires/

Sorry, but good luck with your search!!

Thank you so much for that link Xseler and thanks too for asking your friend about his tyres.

There is a retro bike shop in Christchurch, the bicycle capital of New Zealand, that sells 26 x 1 3/8 tyres, but they are expensive. Even taking into account shipping a pair of those white tyres from junkyrustybikes would still be cheaper.

Yes Steve there is always something in the way of unforeseen problems to overcome. I'm a bit sad I couldn't use the genuine Rudge fork afterall, but the only way to do that would be to continue to use the NOS Rudge mudguards which didn't have the right appearance.
Never mind though, onward and upwards.....

 

[Intrepid Wheelwoman]

Studying that chrome fork in the cold light of day I came to the conclusion that it was just plain wrong. It's plainly a 1970's skinny tyred roadie fork and it doesn't look the part at all.
Sooooo off it came and it was put back into its wrappings and into the 'stores' again.

After some very careful tweaking of the mudguard to get it to fit under the crown of the Rudge fork I was back in business. While I had the forks off the bike I gave them a good clean and buffed up the original stove enamel. With everything back together again I hunted out a nice Miller headlight with an alloy body for the Rudge. Most Miller headlamps are steel so it was a bit of luck being able to get hold of an alloy headlamp. The old Miller bicycle lighting sets are really good and I keep an eye out for them. Needless to say I don't buy the contemporary Lucas, Prince of Darkness lighting sets on principle.

Hanging up in the garage is a ladies Humber 'Royal Prince' bicycle. It's going to be a restoration for experts as it was stored under a house in the damp and it's shockingly rusty. Strange though almost all of its original decals/transfers have survived including the New Zealand dealer's transfers. Being an uncommon model the transfers are all unavailable as repops so before I do anything to this bike I'm going to have to record as much as I can of what is there,
The odd thing about this Humber bicycle is that at some stage of its life it acquired a Rudge chainguard so I snaffled it for my Rudge project (I do have a Humber chainguard to replace it with). Under a lot of dirt and surface rust I could see original paint and transfers so I set to and gave the chainguard a good cleaning. I thought it was black, but it turned out to be dark green once all the dirt and rust was removed. Never mind I've got some 1960's Raleigh chainguards I can convert instead, but I will say that I was really surprised just how nicely the Rudge chainguard cleaned up. At least I've got a sample now so I can attach the new decals correctly.

The Robineau mudguards are going to fit up just fine and they look really nice too. My plan to use the Britannia mudguard mounting hardware is working out too. I haven't finished with the mudguard mounts yet so don't look at the pictures and jump to the wrong conclusions. After working on the Rudge for about three hours I started to get tired so I wisely packed up all my toys rather than trying to press on ahead.

 

[fasteddy]

The reason that the British drink warm beer is because the all own Lucas Refrigerators.

Steve.

 

[xseler]

The reason that the British drink warm beer is because the all own Lucas Refrigerators.

Steve.

That's probably a quote for the 'old guys' thread. Some of the young'ns won't understand that reference...........

 

[fasteddy]

I've heard that one for better than 55 years. Yep it's an old guys one all right but then they don't know anything a Mr Lucas either. Lucky little buggers.

Steve.

 

[fasteddy]

Then again I have a good supply of Jaguar car stories as well.

Steve.

 

[Intrepid Wheelwoman]

Well I don't know what is worse the old Lucas electrics or modern electronic processor systems that run nearly everything in a vehicle. With the old Lucas stuff you could usually persuade it to go again on the side of the road, but with the new magic systems forget it.

Tonight's little task was trying to get my one good Rudge chainwheel to come loose from the frame it was attached to. For the first time I can remember taking out the cotter pin did nothing, The chainwheel and pedal arm was stuck on the bottom bracket shaft and nothing was going to shift them.
In the end I unscrewed the bottom bracket bearing cup behind the chainwheel and got it loose that way. This was not easy as the two miserable little spanner flats that Raleigh put on their bearing cups are not up to the job of getting the darn things undone. I just about wrecked one of my nice old Whitworth 5/16th spanners before the rotten thing shifted which doesn't please me at all because they're getting hard to get. And yes I did know it was left hand thread..

 

[Ludwig II]

I wonder how many people know the significance of the hand motif on that chainwheel.

Cold beer - you can't get anything else these days, and this is in a country that actually does develop snow and ice sometimes; worse yet, the obsession is applied to ciders, some of which are exquisite drinks formulated for room temperature.

Lucas I think always suffered from the British automotive industry trying to do things on the cheap. You still find some really old men not wanting to turn the lights on "because it saves the dynamo".

 

[fasteddy]

Ludwig,

I looked up the Rudge chain ring and saw two answers. Interesting.

My Granddad asked me to get him a beer once when we had a Christmas party and I took one out of the fridge and brought it over to him. The look on his face said it all and I went down to the cellar where the extras were kept and brought that up to him. Grandad was from Birmingham and could not stand cold beer. I truly believe he viewed it in the same light as Heathen worship.

Cider my favorite drink. Never from the fridge that is for sure. Here we make apple jack if your in a cold part of the country. Put the barrel of cider outside and let it freeze through. The cold (-0+F) drives the alcohol into the center of the barrel as it freezes the water. Tap that and put into a proper container and I can tell you having personally researched it that if you have any problems they will be forgotten by the time you finish the second glass. It also gives a new meaning to mobility impaired.

The automotive industry working on the cheap? Hard to believe.

Steve.

 

[Ludwig II]

We have scrumpy ciders here, unnamed apples or blends, also referred to as rough cider. This is a misnomer. Some can be a litte coarse, but others have an almost explosive release of exquisite, polychromatic flavours on the tongue. They too, tend to remove fear, worry, mobility. Some are also a sovereign remedy for farting; one simply doesn't dare, Just In Case.

 

[fasteddy]

Ludwig,

I have heard of scumpy and often wondered what it was exactly. I remember Mrs Slocombe on the old, Are You Being Served. They had all been somewhere visiting and one of the members said that he'd been to the local pub and they were talking about the woman who had downed 6 pints of scrumpy and walked out in good shape.
The look on Mrs Slocombe's face said it all.

I figured it had to be a pretty powerful drink. Most of the ciders we get here have been tamed down. I usually buy something made in Britain. I'd like to make some next year but the government here has stopped orchards from selling raw cider. They want it pasteurized first.

I understand the sovereign remedy.

Steve.