Now that my children are getting old enough to cycle faster than I can walk, it’s high time I replaced the mountain bike that was stolen (along with every other bike in the apartment building by someone impersonating a construction worker) about a decade ago. So I’m eternally grateful to my twitterfriend @angelzilla for alerting me to the posting on Kijiji that made me the proud owner of this step-through (or loop-frame? are they the same thing?) town bike:

Isn’t it lovely? A slightly eccentric English lady bike. I’ve named it (her) Mary Poppins, since as @angelzilla pointed out, she’s the Mary Poppins of bikes. The fellow who sold her to me (thanks Chris!) told me she was from the 1960s, has her original finishes and a coaster brake, and was built by Phillips, who were bought out by Raleigh later on.

She does need a little TLC, mainly rust removal and paint touchup, but not much. Her basket will need a liner, as there are a couple of little breaks in the metal – but since it’s vintage, it’s not current standard dimensions (15″ x 10″ top, 5.5″ deep, and smaller at the bottom than the top), so I can’t just order an already-made one from Lucky Find Designs or Betty Bike Basket Liners on Etsy. Since it needs to be custom, I might as well dust off my sewing machine and make it myself – watch for a future post on that. I’ll also need a bell and some lights for her, and eventually I’d like to add an aluminum rack to the back and attach a wooden crate or a sweet vintage-style covered box pannier. I’ll also need a helmet, since I have no idea what has happened to my old one in the intervening years, and a lock, since that was stolen with my old bike. I love the idea of a D-lock cozy that I saw on the Lovely Bicycle! blog. For my helmet, since I can’t possibly afford that Yakkay helmet that looks like a fedora right now, perhaps I’ll take some inspiration from RidingPretty and spiff up an off-the-shelf helmet with a strategically glued-on flower.

I did a little research online, and here’s what I learned about Miss Mary:

This headbadge may date her to about 1965, according to a Flikr set of another Phillips bike. Phillips was purchased by Raleigh in 1960, and from the Spring of 1961 on the bikes were made in Nottingham at Raleigh’s 40-acre factory instead of the Phillips bikeworks near Birmingham. Raleigh continued to make Phillips-branded bikes for export until the 1980s (the wiki page implies), and some collectors look down on them as poor cousins to the higher-quality Raleigh-branded bikes. Whatever. By today’s standards, the build quality is impressive regardless.

Note the chrome trim on this mudflap – mmmm. This style of mudguard was made by Speedwell and date the bike to the 50s or 60s, according to the information in current eBay listings and Flikr posts. A lot of the steel frame, and the tyre rims, is chromed. The tyre rims are marked STURMEY ARCHER *ENGLAND F250 28 x 1 1/2* (ie, they’re 635mm), and the tyres are marked SEMPERIT, Made In Austria, Super Elite (so they’re probably not original – would likely have been Dunlop when the bike was first sold). The two-tone vinyl mattress saddle was made by Brooks (who were also owned by Raleigh’s parent company), and the white plastic grips were probably made by Dare. The kickstand is marked PLETCHER, who were/are a Swiss manufacturer. The basket isn’t marked, and appears to be made of aluminum. All of this will mean much more to vintage bike collector types than it does to me, I suspect. (Collectors, if it would be helpful to you for me to add more photos of specific bike parts to this post, please just let me know in the comments.)

For local historians, it bears a green “repairs” sticker from Premier Cycle & Sport Shop. Anyone know of them?

I haven’t seen any photos online of similar full-rubber chrome-edged pedals yet. The figure in the middle has an R marked on it, so they’re probably 1960s-era Raleigh pedals.

If my bike were a three-speed, this article from oldroads.com would help me identify it much more easily. But a single-speed mechanism with a coaster brake means I’m out of luck unless I can find a serial number that matches what’s in the article. [Update: there is a serial number stamped onto the frame below the saddle: 3464230. Sadly that tells me nothing. The coaster brake has a plastic-stoppered hole for adding oil, and is marked: ENGLAND STURMEY ARCHER SC (in the bottom triangle) 11   6 (running perpendicular to the 4-triangle logo; if this is month/year, she was probably made in November 1966). SC would be the model number based on the illustration in this article by Sheldon Brown, and according to the official Sturmey-Archer history site, it's the SC single coaster brake hub, introduced in 1963 and retired in 1978.]

Here’s a shot on Flikr of a bike that’s very similar to mine, down to the aluminum front basket, although the frame isn’t as curvaceous.

Next I need to clean Mary up and touch up her paint. Any advice on how best to do that would be greatly appreciated!

Update: I found a genius post on Old Bike Blog on how to Green Clean Your Bicycle. I’m also thinking about DIYs, and found some helpful posts I’ll link to here for my future reference (and maybe yours): link is AWOL, but Bust magazine ran an article on Pimping Your Ride that I’ll need to look up in print (2008?) as it includes a seat cover pattern – if I can’t find it a PDF is available. For attaching to a rear rack: hmm, wine box, or fabric-covered milk crate? If I decide I need a child seat for my little guy, here is inspiration for a DIY child seat spiff-up. I’m also coveting a DIY skirt/coat guard.

Update #2: This is clearly going to end up being a huge project, so I’ve created another blog to document it, called Loop-Frame Love.

Tags: DIY plans, loop-frame, Phillips, vintage bikes

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 3:43 am and is filed under Green Living, cycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.