Fred Williams road bike

[Johnny Ragwort]

I've just been given a couple of bikes, one of which is a 1980 Fred Williams 531 road bike. I have a bit of a tenuous attachment to this since I spent a great deal of time and money in Fred Williams' shop in Wolverhampton back in the 1990s and early 2000s! It's been refinished, the original 531 forks have been replaced with aluminium ones, the straight bars are just wrong and (annoyingly) the downtube shifter lugs have been butchered in order to use them as cable stops, but otherwise it looks like it's worth getting back into decent order. I particularly like the arabesque crankset! I was originally going to stick a fixed wheel on it, but I've already got a fixed and I'd quite like to restore this one properly, even though a refin and transfers will cost me more than it's worth. But does anyone know what the decals should look like? I'd love to see some pics of any others out there.

 

[Johnny Ragwort]

Frame is now stripped and the remains of the gear lever bosses unceremoniously blowtorched off! Now it needs a refin (I don't like the yellow anyway). I've found a pic of a 1979 Fred Williams frame on Flickr and the decals seem to be fairly simple, so I've messaged Retrodecals with a pic. I think I'll also be replacing the aluminium forks with 531 if I can find some at a reasonable price.