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Vindec-the british missing link?
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A new article on Cycle Speedway has been published entitled,
Cycle speedway: The 'skid kids' who raced bicycles on WW2 bomb sites
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31013387
Here's a short quote:
By 1949, the Daily Graphic estimated "the number of teenage enthusiasts of this post-war craze was anything between 30,000 and 100,000".
"Races were televised by the BBC, and national newspapers including the Daily Mail, the News of the World and The Star followed the results.
There were more than 200 clubs in east London alone, and even the Duke of Edinburgh was said to be a fan.
The phenomenon spread across the country. Portsmouth, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff and many other British cities each had numerous teams.
Wherever the bombs rained down, speedway tracks rose from the ashes"...
A new article on Cycle Speedway has been published entitled,
Cycle speedway: The 'skid kids' who raced bicycles on WW2 bomb sites
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31013387
Here's a short quote:
By 1949, the Daily Graphic estimated "the number of teenage enthusiasts of this post-war craze was anything between 30,000 and 100,000".
"Races were televised by the BBC, and national newspapers including the Daily Mail, the News of the World and The Star followed the results.
There were more than 200 clubs in east London alone, and even the Duke of Edinburgh was said to be a fan.
The phenomenon spread across the country. Portsmouth, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff and many other British cities each had numerous teams.
Wherever the bombs rained down, speedway tracks rose from the ashes"...
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Here is a wonderful account from Tony Hadland's blog, that tells what many British teenage boys were doing in the 1950s to 80s.
My own recollection is that these homemade 'Tracker' bicycles were commonplace. I remember overtaking them on my '10 speed' and thinking how impractical for riding in traffic they looked with those wide handlebars.
The adults and the 'serious' cyclists never took them seriously. Of course no one knew that before long, well made versions with fatter tyres would be everywhere. The fact that this particular flowering of British youth culture has been left out of the history of cycling in Britain now needs to be corrected.
After all a single Parisien equivalent 'Tracker' bike club, the VCCP that ran from 1951-56 is in the US Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.
http://mmbhof.org/velo-cross-club-parisien-vccp/
Whilst tracker bicycle riders were doing similar things all over Britain over the three decades, before BMX and the mountain bikes took over.
"I want to take you back to England in 1958. This was still a rather tired little country even though the war had been over for thirteen years. Children and teenagers made their own amusements. If somebody in your street owned a television it would have been bought on credit, and would have been an attraction for visitors because they were still quite rare. Cars were the property of the well-to-do and life as such carried on very much as it had done before 1939, although drastic changes were only a few years away.
I was thirteen in 1958 and had a burning desire to own a motorcycle! However not just an ordinary road going motorcycle, but a scrambler! (Moto Cross Bike) This desire had been fuelled by watching scrambling on television. (Somebody else’s I hasten to add!) Every Sunday afternoon I would watch Arthur Lampkin, Jeff Smith, Dave Bickers and others roar around muddy fields, flying through the air with perfect balance and performing such acrobatic feats on two wheels that I became well and truly hooked.
As a thirteen-year-old in the North of England in 1958, the chances of obtaining such a machine were what dreams were made of. But I was not the only thirteen year old with this dream. There were many others and, by some trick of fate, we had all built bikes that resembled as closely as a bike can, one of those motor cycle scramble machines. We called our machines “Dirt Trackers” or “Track Bikes”. [Not to be confused with the single-speed, fixed-wheel, lightweight racing bikes, traditionally referred to as track bikes.]
I now ask for the reader’s tolerance as I dive down into the well of memory and produce details of a typical “Track Bike” that would have been state-of-the-art those days. Most of the following details refer to my own bike.
1. The Frame – The type of frame used would have been a normal cycle frame from a basic road bike, certainly not a lightweight or a racer. I used a Raleigh Trent Tourist that was quite strong although rather heavy.
2. The Wheels and Tyres – The wheels were 26″ with a 1 3/8th inch steel rims, again as found on most “hack” machinery those days. The tyres were “Avon Gripster”, which were the only ones we could find that had a “knobbly” tread. I recall that Avon originally produced these for speedway bikes, cycle speedway being popular those days, but using a different type of machine to those that I’m discussing here.
3. Front Forks – I used a set of Webb girder forks that were originally produced for use on motorised cycles (cycles with a clip-on motor). These forks were similar in some respects to the old style Harley Davidson fork with the girder arrangement and large spring at the top. There was a fair amount of damping but they were a heavy item. These forks were popular with most of the “Dirt Trackers”, being available from a dealer in Birkenhead who had bought a load in a surplus sale.
4. Handlebars – I used a set of handlebars that actually came off a scrambler! Very wide – and heavy – they had a strengthening bar across them and certainly looked the business in bright chrome. Motorcycle handlebars were the norm with most of the other lads.
5. Saddle – a large sprung saddle was used, lowered down as far as possible and the nose taped to the cross bar. There was no technical merit in this taping – it just looked good!
6. Brakes – I used a hub brake unit on both the back and front wheels. Both came off an old tandem and were built into ordinary rims for me. Again they were heavier than ordinary rim brakes, but the stopping power was out of this world, especially in the rain.
7. Transmission – I used 1/8th inch pitch chain with a Sturmey-Archer 4-speed rear hub gear. The ratios used were constantly being changed, I think I eventually got down to a bottom gear of 25 inches by using a rear cog from an old Myford Lathe that had an unbelievable 36 teeth. Of course, this resulted in a top gear of somewhere around 55 inches! Believe me, riding on the road was tiring! To digress for a moment, we never considered the derailleur gear system because we didn’t think it would stand up to the type of surface we rode over. Also I personally felt that a “gearbox” should be self contained and well lubricated, which the old Sturmey-Archer was.
8. Sundry – I fitted mudguards – it rains a lot in the North of England – because they helped give the impression of my fantasy scrambler. I recall that my rear mudguard (fender) was about eight inches long – and was a sawn off section from a Greaves scrambler. Lights were fitted, I had a bracket on the handlebars to carry my lamp unit, and the brake levers were fitted with plastic covers that had “ball ends,” again as scramblers did. The horn was a bulb horn and the pedals basic rubber platform units.
That information should enable you to appreciate just what we were up to in 1958/59, a good ten years before events in Marin County! As an aside, I often think about building a replica which, who knows … maybe one day".
Here is a wonderful account from Tony Hadland's blog, that tells what many British teenage boys were doing in the 1950s to 80s.
My own recollection is that these homemade 'Tracker' bicycles were commonplace. I remember overtaking them on my '10 speed' and thinking how impractical for riding in traffic they looked with those wide handlebars.
The adults and the 'serious' cyclists never took them seriously. Of course no one knew that before long, well made versions with fatter tyres would be everywhere. The fact that this particular flowering of British youth culture has been left out of the history of cycling in Britain now needs to be corrected.
After all a single Parisien equivalent 'Tracker' bike club, the VCCP that ran from 1951-56 is in the US Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.
http://mmbhof.org/velo-cross-club-parisien-vccp/
Whilst tracker bicycle riders were doing similar things all over Britain over the three decades, before BMX and the mountain bikes took over.
"I want to take you back to England in 1958. This was still a rather tired little country even though the war had been over for thirteen years. Children and teenagers made their own amusements. If somebody in your street owned a television it would have been bought on credit, and would have been an attraction for visitors because they were still quite rare. Cars were the property of the well-to-do and life as such carried on very much as it had done before 1939, although drastic changes were only a few years away.
I was thirteen in 1958 and had a burning desire to own a motorcycle! However not just an ordinary road going motorcycle, but a scrambler! (Moto Cross Bike) This desire had been fuelled by watching scrambling on television. (Somebody else’s I hasten to add!) Every Sunday afternoon I would watch Arthur Lampkin, Jeff Smith, Dave Bickers and others roar around muddy fields, flying through the air with perfect balance and performing such acrobatic feats on two wheels that I became well and truly hooked.
As a thirteen-year-old in the North of England in 1958, the chances of obtaining such a machine were what dreams were made of. But I was not the only thirteen year old with this dream. There were many others and, by some trick of fate, we had all built bikes that resembled as closely as a bike can, one of those motor cycle scramble machines. We called our machines “Dirt Trackers” or “Track Bikes”. [Not to be confused with the single-speed, fixed-wheel, lightweight racing bikes, traditionally referred to as track bikes.]
I now ask for the reader’s tolerance as I dive down into the well of memory and produce details of a typical “Track Bike” that would have been state-of-the-art those days. Most of the following details refer to my own bike.
1. The Frame – The type of frame used would have been a normal cycle frame from a basic road bike, certainly not a lightweight or a racer. I used a Raleigh Trent Tourist that was quite strong although rather heavy.
2. The Wheels and Tyres – The wheels were 26″ with a 1 3/8th inch steel rims, again as found on most “hack” machinery those days. The tyres were “Avon Gripster”, which were the only ones we could find that had a “knobbly” tread. I recall that Avon originally produced these for speedway bikes, cycle speedway being popular those days, but using a different type of machine to those that I’m discussing here.
3. Front Forks – I used a set of Webb girder forks that were originally produced for use on motorised cycles (cycles with a clip-on motor). These forks were similar in some respects to the old style Harley Davidson fork with the girder arrangement and large spring at the top. There was a fair amount of damping but they were a heavy item. These forks were popular with most of the “Dirt Trackers”, being available from a dealer in Birkenhead who had bought a load in a surplus sale.
4. Handlebars – I used a set of handlebars that actually came off a scrambler! Very wide – and heavy – they had a strengthening bar across them and certainly looked the business in bright chrome. Motorcycle handlebars were the norm with most of the other lads.
5. Saddle – a large sprung saddle was used, lowered down as far as possible and the nose taped to the cross bar. There was no technical merit in this taping – it just looked good!
6. Brakes – I used a hub brake unit on both the back and front wheels. Both came off an old tandem and were built into ordinary rims for me. Again they were heavier than ordinary rim brakes, but the stopping power was out of this world, especially in the rain.
7. Transmission – I used 1/8th inch pitch chain with a Sturmey-Archer 4-speed rear hub gear. The ratios used were constantly being changed, I think I eventually got down to a bottom gear of 25 inches by using a rear cog from an old Myford Lathe that had an unbelievable 36 teeth. Of course, this resulted in a top gear of somewhere around 55 inches! Believe me, riding on the road was tiring! To digress for a moment, we never considered the derailleur gear system because we didn’t think it would stand up to the type of surface we rode over. Also I personally felt that a “gearbox” should be self contained and well lubricated, which the old Sturmey-Archer was.
8. Sundry – I fitted mudguards – it rains a lot in the North of England – because they helped give the impression of my fantasy scrambler. I recall that my rear mudguard (fender) was about eight inches long – and was a sawn off section from a Greaves scrambler. Lights were fitted, I had a bracket on the handlebars to carry my lamp unit, and the brake levers were fitted with plastic covers that had “ball ends,” again as scramblers did. The horn was a bulb horn and the pedals basic rubber platform units.
That information should enable you to appreciate just what we were up to in 1958/59, a good ten years before events in Marin County! As an aside, I often think about building a replica which, who knows … maybe one day".
justbackdated
Retrobike Rider
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Well, I still have mine sitting amongst the rest of the gear at FORK-English HQ
And no; I am not going to fit a Pace fork to it!!
Not really done much to it since I picked it up, It is fairly original, even down to the tyres but it could do with a service! One more job amongst a million others :roll:
Nice to see some coming out of the shadows though.
Cheers
Tim
Well, I still have mine sitting amongst the rest of the gear at FORK-English HQ
And no; I am not going to fit a Pace fork to it!!Not really done much to it since I picked it up, It is fairly original, even down to the tyres but it could do with a service! One more job amongst a million others
:roll: Nice to see some coming out of the shadows though.
Cheers
Tim
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Stumbling across this thread made my night. Am feeling suitably nostalgic for some klunkerish now
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KeepItSteel":cy96qt95 said:
except these are 'Trackers' not klunkers :mrgreen:
