Lol - I'd thought about sticking a bid on that so I asked the vendor a couple of questions:
1) Any chance of a picture from around the head tube area - I was wondering what the brown bit of the paintwork at the top of the forks is.
2) Can you confirm that the frame is straight, rust free and without cracks or dents? It looks slightly like the forks might be bent back in the photo but the angle and the fit of the mudguards could be causing that. I'm interested in the bike but the frame does need to be undamaged.
This is the reply:
Hi there, the bike is for spares or full refurb. Regards Julie.
I decided that wasn't good enough for a trip to St Helens even if it was only a tenner! Ironically, your pics would have sold it to me!!
Glad to see it looks straight. I'd assumed it was a Sterling or vogue from around 1991-2. I have the 1991 Catalogue and the bikes in that have the solid infilled lettering on them. I think the outline lettering was a year or two later. The Vogue in particular seems to have the same touring twin chainset but in 1991 that had caliper brakes. Otherwise it isn't far off - even the clamp on DT shifters appear to be Vogue spec. Unfortunately, the pic in the catalogue of the gents frame is thumbnail so you can't see the lugs. The Womens frame does have fancier fork crown lugs than the Horizon and Galaxy Reynolds ones.
So, it might be a Vogue. If it was, it would date from 1991 or 2 I guess. After the 1991 model year (ie 1990) the Vogue would have needed to have moved from 500 to 531 and gone from calipers to cantilevers and retained relatively old fashioned lugs (which I suppose is possible if they had stocks of them). Aside from the lugs, nothing looks out of place for a Dawes Tourer of this time.
I did Google Dawes Vogue when I was looking at this one but didn't find anything conclusive.
1991 my spec is:
500 main tubes, vertical dropouts, Sachs Classic 1500 mechs, Stronglight 80 14 speed double.
