Clive Stuart Restoration

curyam

Devout Dirtbag
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My Clive Stuart bike was purchased years ago as a used frameset, from one of the better, road bike shops in Seattle. It’s built of 531 DB tubing, stays and fork with Campagnolo drop outs. The frame was built with a wrap-around joining of the seat stays to the seat tube and an integrated seat post clamp. Possibly, Prugnat lugs? It came with a Campy NR Headset and BB.

As a college student, I originally built up the bike with scrounged parts, eventually finishing it with Campy and Campy copy components from; MKS, SR Royal, Sunshine and Suntour Superbe. The bike served me well as a commuter and all-purpose bike and friend. It’s a veteran of multiple Seattle to Portland double century rides.

Sometime later I decided to update the bike with index shifting and newer components. It was very battle worn so I made the difficult decision of losing the original decals and repainting the bike. It was media blasted and a few braze-ons were added, rear drops spread. It was sprayed in the original red color with Dupont Imron. From Reynolds, I obtained and used a special 25th anniversary decal, other than that is was nameless and badgeless.

While I enjoyed the bike, it lost all of the elegance and charm it once had. It needed to be restored back to a seventies period bike. It will be a rider, I want to use it and enjoy the bike so NOS parts weren’t necessary. I used existing parts and slowly gathered clean examples of other period Campy parts to finish off the bike. Some non-anodized parts were cleaned and polished. Anodized parts retain their original finish. Cinelli stem and bars are used and my original (1973) small rivet Brooks Professional saddle was recalled to duty. Wheels are Mavic tubular rims on Campy NR small flange hubs. Charles Hadrann at Wright Brother's cycles helped with his vast Campy knowledge and parts bins.

Decals were a challenge. I had but one picture of the bike before it was repainted. It seems there are not many examples of Clive Stuart Bikes to compare with. The bikes I have seen all have somewhat different graphics applications. I computer created the decal’s graphics as best could be and Velocals did an excellent job of producing them. (thanks JR!) They now available from Velocals to others restoring a CS bike. The decals were clear coated and polished. Lug highlighting was also difficult. Bob Freeman of Elliott Bay Cycles gave me some tips and I was able to complete the job myself.

I also created a website about what I leaned about Clive Stuart Cycles
please see www.myclive.homestead.com

More pix on next post.
 
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lugwork and fork details

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new seat tube decals came out nice

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my 1973 Brooks purchased new
 
Congratulations on a stunning rebuild :cool:

It does have all the hall marks of Brian Rourkes frames, especially the wrap around seat stays. If so I believe the most likely builder would by Roger Kowalski.

I have a Brian Rourke myself and RetroBike member Old Ned made a post about Rouke's early builders Paul Washington and Roger Kowalski, so Ned may be able to add some useful information to your post.

http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewto ... sc&start=0

It may even be worth contacting Brian himself. I know his son Jason does the frame building now but Brian still does all the fittings for frames.

http://www.rourke.biz/
 
Robbied196":3hb0s5bb said:
Congratulations on a stunning rebuild :cool:

It does have all the hall marks of Brian Rourkes frames, especially the wrap around seat stays. If so I believe the most likely builder would by Roger Kowalski.

I have a Brian Rourke myself and RetroBike member Old Ned made a post about Rouke's early builders Paul Washington and Roger Kowalski, so Ned may be able to add some useful information to your post.

http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewto ... sc&start=0

It may even be worth contacting Brian himself. I know his son Jason does the frame building now but Brian still does all the fittings for frames.

http://www.rourke.biz/

Thanks to all for the kind words. Seeing all the treasures on the forum was certainly an inspriation for me to finish the bike. Old Ned did share with me earlier a few tid bits of what he knew about C.S. I tried to contact Brian Rourke thru the shop about the build of my bike but never received a reply.
Perhaps I'll try again.
Cheers,
 
curyam":32f646xs said:
I tried to contact Brian Rourke thru the shop about the build of my bike but never received a reply.
Perhaps I'll try again.
Cheers,

I've had the same problem, apparently they will give you all the information you need if you pay a visit! Bit of a problem given your location, but I'm only 40 miles away so when I get chance I'm planning a trip to Rourke's.

Hopefully, the man himself will be around so I'll try and find out about the Clive Stuart history and post any information I get.

If there's anything specific you want to know, let me know :)
 
Robbied196":2me1akrq said:
curyam":2me1akrq said:
I tried to contact Brian Rourke thru the shop about the build of my bike but never received a reply.
Perhaps I'll try again.
Cheers,

I've had the same problem, apparently they will give you all the information you need if you pay a visit! Bit of a problem given your location, but I'm only 40 miles away so when I get chance I'm planning a trip to Rourke's.

Hopefully, the man himself will be around so I'll try and find out about the Clive Stuart history and post any information I get.

If there's anything specific you want to know, let me know :)

That would be great. Lucky you, you live a beautiful area. I've been on the M6 years ago that's as close as I'll probably ever get. I'm just curious if he would know who might have built the bike and year. The similarities of the BR and CS are amazing. There are more pix on the website I mentioned. Appreciate anything you can learn and post.
Thanks, curyam
 

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