Origins of Ribbles Reynolds 653 frames

MartinB123

Senior Retro Guru
Hi all,

I had a Ribble frame a few years ago - it had Reynolds 653 tubing and was lovely, anyway it got dented and I fell out of love so I sold.

I have bought another Ribble 653 from eBay and i'm wondering if anyone has more info on who actually constructed the frames, a bit of searching around has suggested they were put together by Italian framebuilders, or did it just vary from frame to frame?

Pic below:

s-l1600.jpg
 
My understanding is that a lot of them were put together by a company called Autostrada, owned by the framebuilder Mike Kowal. If you search for Kowal on here you should turn up some stuff.
 
Frank Herety made some frames for them on occasions and he told me all of his have FH stamped as part of the frame number, mostly around the BB area
 
Re:

A user on this forum used to make frames for them I think it was John Perks but I might be wrong (Not sure of his user name) and I also think he was working for Autostrada when building them. He said something like "the frames we made for Ribble were as good if not better than nearly everything out there"

NB this is from my crap memory! Might not be John Perks, might not be Autostrada but I definitely DO remember the user being proud of the frames he had made for Ribble.
 
Re: Re:

CTK":1nhzwh4w said:
A user on this forum used to make frames for them I think it was John Perks but I might be wrong (Not sure of his user name) and I also think he was working for Autostrada when building them. He said something like "the frames we made for Ribble were as good if not better than nearly everything out there"

NB this is from my crap memory! Might not be John Perks, might not be Autostrada but I definitely DO remember the user being proud of the frames he had made for Ribble.
Andy Perks, John (ex-pro rider) is his Dad. Autostrada is correct. Mike Kowal's company - see also the current Harry Hall thread.
 
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