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Thanks. The design brief I gave to Highpath Engineering was to build and all-weather, all-season off-road touring bike based on Geoff Apps' Cleland Aventura design. It has been made to cope with the British winter mud with guards to keep as much mud as possible from splattering onto the rider...

Some people may believe that cycling should not be this comfortable and real cycling is about high-pressure tyres, razor sharp saddles and riding positions that make your hands numb and neck ache. I wonder how many people have given up off-road cycling because their bikes are uncomfortable over...

The crucial dimension is the reach between the saddle and the handlebars. If this is too long, it puts too much weight on the arms and increases the strain on the back. The 90mm lower handlebars of your Brompton, S-type will only make a slight difference in the forward lean in the body when...

Back in the 1970's and early 80's, Geoff Apps rode lots of types of bicycle off-road and came to the conclusion that big wheeled, high handlebar, short reach frames were best. He also preferred the hand position to be in line with the steering axis of the forks, which meant that the handlebars...

Interesting commuter bike. I have seen Shimano roller brakes with belt drives before, but not an old-school Sturmey Archer drum. I like the use of bull-horn handlebars. I have a similar arrangement on my Moulton APB and find it to be very comfortable. When riding in traffic and built up...

In nearly 40 years experience of riding off-road on drum-brakes I have only gone down like a led zeppelin once. This was last winter when a front 90mm Shimano Roller brake failed when I was going down a sunken track that gets steeper and steeper the further you go down. Despite pulling on the...

Having said: "I wouldn't want to use them on a steep technical off-road downhill, even with four-finger levers." They never ever locked unexpectedly and threw me over the bars in the way that hydraulic disk-brakes have. Nor can I remember a time when the Sturmey's + four finger levers, didn't...

With drum-brakes being popular on tandems, I am not surprised that a builder who made tandems would also use them on their MTBs. This is what Rod says of the braking on his Swallow Merlin as: "Awful. On/off, little modulation, would work better with 4 finger levers Im sure, but I dont like 4...

I used to think that the Repack down-hill races were named after hub-brakes, like the ones we have been discussing so far, getting so hot that the grease boiled out of the bearings. In fact the early MTB pioneers were originally using back-pedal coaster-brakes which were packed with grease to...

Yes, Six-speed derailleur, drum-brake and two-speed hub-gear all built into one wheel. You should be able to change the two-speed when the bike is not moving, which is useful on a city-bike. The drum-brake shoes should last for many thousands of miles without maintenance. Sachs also made a...

The leading shoe is the one that has the self-servo self-energising action. In reverse, like when stopping on a steep ascent, the top shoe becomes the leading one. So with a Leleu-type brake you get the additional self-energising action no matter which way around the brake is applied. For...

The most important characteristic of these early MTB wheels is their use of heavy=duty 12 gauge spokes. A feature that was later dropped in favour of lighter spokes, butted spokes and more spokes per wheel. The late 1980's versions of these wheels used 14 gauge single-butted stainless spokes...

Yes. 12g galvanised motorcycle spokes will be identical to the same gauge bicycle spokes though shorter than the 254mm ones I need. Yes it's purely about keeping to the original early 1980's spec and look. Though I guess that unpolished stainless spokes would look similar to newly galvanised...

Thanks for that. However, their charges of £65 per wheel would make the project too expensive. It would be far cheaper for me to buy a spoke threading machine, and modify some long NOS spokes I have.

I am hoping to build some wheels using NOS hubs and rims. But to keep them original spec, I need to use galvanised spokes. Specifically; 12 gauge 254 mm ones. Does anyone know of a current supplier of galvanised spokes? Cheers, Graham

I believe that the Sturmey Archer alloy brakes were designed mainly for the Dutch-roadster market and they were never seriously marketed in the UK. However, a few UK MTB and City-bike makers experimented with them in the late 1980's. Meanwhile mainstream MTB design moved from using cantilevers...

My 70mm 'Elite' hubs were bought and fitted in the spring of 1985 not long after SA introduced them. I believe that they were the first alloy hub-brakes that SA made. SA did make some Leleu-type, self-centering cam variants of the 'Elite'. However, due to an error the prototypes had a tendency...

The bike is a Mk1 Cleland Dingbat with its long headtube, high bottom-bracket and 3" wide rear tyre. It is using a rear Lelue brake on the front as this makes for a stronger front wheel than using the narrower Lelue front brake. I remember that Saracen used to make a red MTB with Sturmey Archer...

The 70mm Sturmey's I used were nicely made but poorly designed and any dust or water that gets inside is trapped. Also, the brakes used to fade as more dust from brake-shoe wear built up inside. Instead of being low-maintenance, you had to take them apart and remove the dust. I haven't used...

That's pretty well my experience; extremely progressive, reliable and quiet braking. With an light weight alloy drum, the rotating weight can be very low as most of the weight is in the axle and the non-rotating brake-shoe plate. I notice that the Gary Fisher made Klunker brought over from the...