Lovely old bike too. Raleigh methinks with dynohub, great bars, cork grips and saddle bag.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Cycling News
Oldie but Goodie (Well, Python actually)
(18 posts)-
Posted 11 years ago #
-
The bike changes. It starts out as a straight handlebar roadster but develops drops and derailleur by the end of the sketch.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Yes, you're right. Only noticed on the second viewing.
Posted 11 years ago # -
That is one of the superhero powers of bicycle repairman, takes standard bike and soups up into top end vehicle for the period. I noticed the bracket on the fork for a pifco lamp, those were the days
Posted 11 years ago # -
The Pifco I had needed a mad spendy battery, it had a screw as the on switch and it rusted like crazy.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Did the battery have a paper casing?
Posted 11 years ago # -
I remember many a happy ride thumping my rear Pifco to try and get the flickery light to come back to full* brightness, while trying to keep half an eye on the road. Eventually scraped together the pennies for an EverReady, which were pretty much state of the art in terms of brighness and reliability in 1979. Those were the days indeed...
* this is a relative term!
Posted 11 years ago # -
My first "racer"* was similar, but it was an EverReady lamp, and one day the bolt holding the clamp came loose and the light swung straight into my front wheel. Ow.
*Puch Prima Super12 - back in the days when 2x6 was impressive.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Vintage bicycle lamps by Mike Gerrish, on FlickrPosted 11 years ago # -
I think the battery was indeed papery.
There was a tell tale on the top so you could tell it was on. I suppose that gives some idea of how bright they were.
I got that in about '78. I still used it in early '81 but by '82 I had a plastic EverReady which was much better. Ran on SP2 (D cell) batteries.By the late '80s I was on the angled EverReady and nicads.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Commuting through the winter must have been a fraught/expensive/heavy affair on Alkaline d-cell'd energisers. They were the first lights I got as a kid and remember walking my bike back from my grans a lot because the battery I got at Christmas was dead by mid January and I never had the money to buy fresh cells.
Posted 11 years ago # -
By '88 I was in London and only doing 5 miles each way. Winter daylight is markedly longer there so I didn't need to use them much.
NiCads don't give you much warning about running out but I didn't need to be in early and never had to use lights in the morning so I had time to charge them up at work during the day.
Posted 11 years ago # -
steveo:" the battery I got at Christmas was dead by mid January and I never had the money to buy fresh cells"
Luxury. We had it tough.
Posted 11 years ago # -
And then, of course, there was the fun every October of trying to chisel the corroded remnants of last year's batteries from the interior of the light.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Vintage bicycle lamps by Mike Gerrish, on Flickr
The chunky ones at the top, unmistakeably Ever Ready, wouldn't look out of place on the front of a steam locomotive.
Yet the ones at the bottom could have come out of the LBS yesterday. The teal coloured lights probably say 'Lezyne' on the other side, and the black one probably says 'Exposure'.
My Ever Ready Nightriders ended up with bits of cardboard and kitchen roll inside them in a desperate bid to stop the batteries rattling. Not that there was much point since you never got much light out of them when running on 2.4V early rechargeables instead of 3V zinc chloride.
Posted 11 years ago # -
We didn't have lights. It was no harder to cycle than to walk the minor roads and farm tracks in the dark.
Posted 11 years ago # -
And let us not mention the dynamos fitted to Raleigh bikes...which were more effective as brakes than energy producers.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Neither mrSRD nor I could remember seeing this, but I thought someone must have shared it earlier. And they have. Link again to save you scrolling up.
Posted 8 years ago #
Reply
You must log in to post.
posts
