The plan....

Ok, I have now stripped down the bike and have cleaned the parts enough to have found out the exact spec.

This is what I am working with....

Frame/Forks: Stuart Purves 531. Frame number 53104, so the fourth frameset built in January 1953.

Headset: Champion steel (Made in England)

Bottom bracket: Bayliss Wiley cups with CB axle (both made in England)

Chainset: Nervar 42/52 double (made in France)

Pedals: Weco (made in Germany)

Chain: not sure yet

Freewheel: Regina GS Corse 5sp 14-24T drilled out back of sprockets (I think made in Italy)

Rear mech: Huret Svelto (made in France) [pictured below]

Front mech: Suntour VX band on (made in Japan)

Gear levers: Shimano double band on (made in Japan)

Brake levers: Weinmann alloy (not sure of provenance)

Calipers: Weinmann Type 730 (made in Switzerland)

Bars: GB Road Champion (made in England)

Stem: SR 100mm (made in Japan)

Seatpin: Stratalite alloy (made in England)

Saddle: Wrights W3N (made in England)

Mudguards: Bluemels (made in England)

Front wheel: 27" 36hole Weinmann (Belgium) alloy rim rebuilt onto a Normandy 46-78 large flange hub (France) with 298mm ACI (Italy) eliptical spokes [perfect spoke length].

Rear wheel: 27" 40hole Dunlop (England) alloy rim rebuilt onto a Campagnolo small flange flip flop hub (Italy) with 298mm ACI (Italy) eliptical spokes [298/300mm would have been perfect spoke length].

Tyres: Michelin 27" (amazingly badged as being made in England!?)

So that is the exact spec of the bike. I have stripped everything from its original condition. Having looked at the parts it would appear the bike had a large amount of renovation in the late 1970's or early 1980's. For sure the frame and rear wheel are from the 50's but the front wheel is from 1978. Also the frame was originally built for a single chainring (single boss on the downtube) but had Shimano gear levers and Suntour front mech bolted on.

My intention is to keep as much as I can but to hopefully restore it to being a single chainring five speed bike, as originally designed. With regard to the paintwork, I am going to have this professionally re-enamelled by Mercian Cycles in Derby. I am thinking of having the frame and forks painted in a powder blue colour to match the Bluemels mudguards with gold lug lining throughout. I think this will look classy and timeless.

Today I have completely stripped out the old spokes from the wheels as they were knackered, and dismantled the hubs. The hubs have both been thoroughly stripped, cleaned, regreased and rebearinged. I have drilled the rear hub holes out from 2.07mm to 2,40mm to accept modern spokes. The hubs have been polished to the best finish I could get using 600, 800 then 1200 wet and dry paper. They were then polished three times using chrome polish. I used exactly the same process on the rims.

The next stage was to rebuild the wheels. For this I selected some ACI spokes which our shop has had since the late 70's. These are stainless steel as opposed to the galvanised crap originally fitted. So although the spokes are technically vintage (same sort of age as the front wheel) they are still of a high quality with a nice polished finish.

Onto the building. I did the rear first (as I always do when building). As expected with a 56 year old single-skin aluminium rim it was quite, OK very, soft. Even with 40 spokes it was a bit of a git to build! In the end I would have preferred an extra mm on the spoke length, but all the threads were taken up so that's the main thing. Build time in total, about 1hr 20min.

The front however was a doddle. The spoke length was absolutely bang-on and made the build so much easier. Build time total, 35mins.

On both wheels I would have preferred a little more spoke tension but the strength of the rims is insufficient compared to modern rims. Both wheels are built symmetrically using a three cross pattern. I had read that on 40 spoke rears 4 cross is 'de rigeur' but on this combo 3 cross gave a better spoke line so used that instead.

Here we go

Hi everyone, this is my first post which may interest one or two of the six billion or so people out there.

Here's a bit about my background....

I had always been a very keen cyclist but it wasn't until the Tour de France came to Brighton in 1994 that road racing had captured my imagination. I had watched it on TV the year before and the prospect of seeing it for myself (and a day out of school) seemed too good to be true. I did not expect to get hooked, but I surely did, and had to get my own road bike ASAP!

From that day on it was a case of doing extra paper rounds, part time jobs etc to pay for my first bike, a Raleigh M-Trax 7000R. This was one of the very last handbuilt Raleighs out of Nottingham (built by a chap called Clive, IIRC).

From the moment I had my first road bike I was constantly striving to improve it's, rather than my, performance! This has led me into a career in the cycle retail industry as a cycle mechanic/shop assistant full time since 1997.

In that time I have built/maintained bikes for the Commonwealth Games, Revolution track series and World Masters track championships. I have had two "Best-in test" reviews in the national press for my wheel building and am generally known as a tech-geek! Carbon fibre chainrings, 24carat gold cables, drilled out stuff; you name it, I've had it.

Now however, things have come full circle for me. Whilst in my day job I still love fitting people for exotic custom carbon fibre bikes and advising on how best to get under that 6.8kg limit the UCI set, I am now the proud and very lucky owner of a 1953 Stuart Purves road bike.

I have acquired this from an elderly customer who no longer had any use for it. I have gratefully accepted this on the proviso that I will restore it, as best as possible, to the original design brief.

For now, here are a couple of pictures of the bike as it has come into me. In my next post I will endeavour to give a full run down of the spec as I received it.

TTFN (that's Ta-ta for now!)

Steve.