British Eagle Strato

Hi, I’m a bit more active on the MTB side of this site, but over lockdown I’ve had the time to finish this 10 speed.

Appreciate this is very low end compared to most of the bikes here, but this was my first ‘proper bike’ as a teenager, must have been 87 I think, and I rode it a lot, partly for fun with mates around the estate we lived on, but also as transport and independence.

I got my first MTB around 91 I think, so the Eagle took a back seat from then on.

Having received the Eagle as a 13 year old, it was a bit small for me by the time I got to Uni. So I put flat bars on it and changed the brake levers and lent to my girlfriend. She married me eventually so obviously I did a good job!

I can’t quite remember what happened next precisely but it’s along the lines of moving to London, small flat and not having space and it pains me now to think about it but I took that Eagle to the Wandsworth recycling centre and said goodbye. I did have a moment of doubt, but i was early 20s, just starting my adult life in the capital, wtf did I need an old 10 speed from my youth for?

Re: British Eagle Stratos

Here the only picture I can find of the original bike.

I’m in the beige, the other dude is my French exchange pen pal.

Mums camera work not the best but it was a retro camera Kodak instamatic if anyone remember a those, 110mm an flash cubes that you had to plonk on the top!

Re: British Eagle Stratos

Apreciate you can’t see much of the bike in the picture. So spec is as follows

Reynolds 453 (BE and Falcon only bikes I’ve ever seen use this tubing - assume its gas pipe)
Rigida chrome rims - rusty within a year
Mallard hubs - surprisingly good
Weinmann 500 brakes - ubiquitous but okay
Solida chainset - quite nice but riveted
Simplex (prestige?) mechs and shifters

Stem, bars, seat pin, saddle generic entry level stuff, but perfectly useable

Re: British Eagle Stratos

Anyway, couple of years back was trawling eBay and low and behold a Strato turned up about 30 miles from me.

Poorly listed, auction finishing on a Tuesday afternoon, undesirable bike etc etc and I was in for £46!

Collected it and the old boy selling was a bit embarrassed about the condition - I assume he thought I was someone looking to have a ride away machine from the get go.

Actually it wasnt too bad, completely original and just in need of some tlc

Re: British Eagle Stratos

All came apart easily, no big issues.

A few rusty spots here and there, but touched them in with a bit of radiator touch up paint I found lying about.

First thoughts were to rebuild it with a Tiaga 10 speed group, I had spare following a bike accident I had, writing off a modern bike

So bought some new wheels from CRC to seal the deal but when the arrived and I tried them I immediately realised the rear end was 120mm so no way a modern 135mm wheel would fit!

Re: British Eagle Stratos

You could probably fit 9 of the 10 gears in if you want to use your Tiagra group, but you'll need an older 126mm spaced wheel to do it (i.e. for a 6/7 speed Shimano Hyperglide cassette). Use a Shimano Tiagra or SRAM PG-1050 10-speed cassette. Both of these cassettes are made up of separate gear cogs and individual spacers and you can take them apart. Take off one of the gears and spacers and it'll be the correct width for the 6/7 speed freehub. Undo the locknuts on the axle cones and you'll see a selection of thin washers and usually a narrow spacer on the non drive side. Take them all out and the wheel will be pretty close to 120mm. You might need to re-centre the wheel by slackening all the spoke nipples on one side by half a turn and tightening the other side by the same amount to bring it back into the middle. You'll need to check the chain clears the dropout when on the smallest cog because you've taken out the washer on that side. Set the derailleur screw so it can only shift across those 9 gears and you're good to go.

Re: British Eagle Stratos

You could run it as a singlespeed - they use a 120mm rear hub?

Re: British Eagle Stratos

If it really is 120, you may have trouble running anything new as the last sprocket of anything wider may foul the stays.

With a bit of fiddling you can get a 7spd 126mm wheel in if you play around with the spacing on the axle and a bit of dishing for the rim. If you dont have a 120 axle, you can carefully use a grinder to lop a few mm off the ends of a 126 so the quick releases work

Re: British Eagle Stratos

Thanks guys, really appreciate the input and level of knowledge here. Great to see that these interoperability issue can be worked around!

As it is, I have a couple of other bikes in the family running tiagra 10 speed, so I have earmarked that spare kit as replacements as and when needed (obviously I’m deluding myself here to think I’ll actually ever need them due to wear, but hey, got to justify it some how!)

As suggested I sent the 10/11 speed wheels back and got nice set of “mad speed 7” single speed wheels from eBay. They arrived with some trashy stickers on them, but luckily they peeled off easily.

New hoods, bar tape, bit of a polish up and I was done.

Only slight challenges were the chainset and chain. I started off using the original Solida double, on the small 42 ring. But I had to use the 10 speed chain with this, which didn’t work with the single speed rear cog.

So then I cobbled together a mis matched campag chainset, which luckily seems to work okay with the original stronglight bottom bracket. I then reverted to the 1/8 ss chain and all was well with the world!

Re: British Eagle Stratos

Some some pictures, with the Solida and a rear mech to take up the chain slack as a temp measure