Please help me identify this old girl! Think she's British?

[Big Block]

OldTel
I have a Hobbs Raceweight a few months earlier than yours.

rest of the photos
and a thread on its build

OldTel may be right. It could be a D as a prefix. Can you take any clearer photo of the serial number on the rear dropout?
Does it have any lubrication point on the head tube non drive side?

and can you accurately measure the centre to centre of the head tube badge holes?

You also might try Peter at the Hobbs of Barbican Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/Hobbs-of-Barbi ... 153513954/

Peter is the Veteran Cycle Club Marque Enthusiast for Hobbs.
Peter may know of any other Hobbs with the light bracket the same as yours.

 

[lunker]

Thanks so much for the effort in replying guys, much appreciated. I can't get a clear photo of the serial now, but I have an older photo when I was removing the old powdercoat someone had given it years ago.

The serial has the strange "almost character" before the clear "7". I am not sure if the serial starts with 7 or if the first number/letters were rubbed off.

I can't tell if the serial is 72671 or (possibly) 1071671. The dropout doesn't have a sign of the '6' that the fork has however.
All a bit confusing!

The fork should not have suffered from the serial being partly rubbed off though. Still that serial isn't clear either.

I appreciate anyone's input on that one!

I am also pretty interested as to why a potentially British frame, in Australia, would have a lamp mount on the wrong side for both of us.

Cheers!

 

[lunker]

There is no lubrication point other than that on the top of BB shell, and it looks to be 56mm between centre of the holes for the headbadge. Cheers

Hmm the more I look at it, possibly the first character is a D if they used larger font...

 

[Martin Rattler]

Re:

I think that the nearside lamp bracket question has been mentioned elsewhere on the forum. According to that, this was quite a common location for the lamp mounting, the idea being that it would better illuminate the kerb. Presumably avoiding hitting the kerb was given more importance than being visible to other road users at night which probably says something about the traffic volume at the time of manufacture. I am sure that I have seen machines with a lamp boss on each fork blade, so perhaps either or both would have been given as an option.

 

[lunker]

Re:

Ah Martin thanks for clearing that up. Interesting (and nice) to think about the apparent lack of traffic!

 

[531brazed]

many frames of that quality were built to individual customer order, so could potentially have been fitted with anything, not that there was a lot of choice in those days

 

[531brazed]

3 rear dropouts, 3 different bolt hole locations. I think we can ignore that as a clue