Harry Hall restoration

Dear Forum,

Whilst I'm stuck at home my friend has dropped off his old Harry Hall 531 bike to look over. It's pretty corroded but I think it can be salvaged.

It has Shimano 600 throughout, looks like circa 1983 (that's a wild guess). 6 speed rear hub, so it's likely still narrow spaced at the rear.

It's a 24 inch bike and he's very tall, so he's somewhat wedded to it. It probably needs converting to Compact gearing, as he's not getting any younger.....

Are these bikes worth restoring and if he did want to move to a compact set up, is there a way to do it whilst keeping that 1980's look?

Thanks,

Stuart

Personally I'd say it's worth doing.
The big decision is collector's piece or rider. Personally as it's got to be repainted, I'd go rider.
1 Respace rear to 130mm, or decide to run 7 speed / 126mm. Respacing is easy, takes only half an hour even doing it gently and slowly. The wider rear allows modern gears and bigger sprockets at the low end of the range (say 28-30T)
2 Stick with DT shifters etc, looks right, allows the original brake levers etc.
3 As you rightly point out, old chainsets can only deliver horribly big gears. Spa Cycles do a reasonably nice chainset (XD2) for not much money in double or triple. An alternative is the old TA/Stronglight Cyclotourist type, now also remanufactured by Velo Orange. You can even do an Alpine Double of 28/44 or similar. Pair it with an 11-28 rear cassette and you have something really useful. Add an older Shimano mech which looks reasonably shiny, even short cage should be fine.

Re:

Dear Hamster,

That's really sound advice, thank you for taking the time to get back to me.

My friend figured on a £300 budget for restoration so this may all be feasible.

Best wishes,

Stuart

For a lovely respray try Bob Jackson. I reckon you can do it inside £300 comfortably.