Anyone out there got a 1980-ish Falcon San Remo or Olympic?

[Littlefish]

I'm trying to identify this frame - it has Carlton/Raleigh type wraparound seat stays, but it's not either of them. I think it may be a Falcon, and the date codes on the components it came with suggest about 1980 vintage. It's also light enough to be 531 tubing or similar: the bare frame is 2305g, which seems pretty light for a for a 63cm/25in frame. Frame number on BB is G39692. If it's a Falcon, and if it's 531, then it's probably a San Remo or Olympic. Does anyone out there have one of these? Can anyone confirm this theory? Thanks.

 

[Midlife]

It's not a San-Remo Equipe but looks suspiciously like an Olympic with the chrome on the forks only.

Falcon were a law unto themselves as to what went out of the factory gates in Brigg BITD. We sold them in the bike shop in the 70's and unwrapping one was always a bit of a surprise The Frame numbers seem entirely random LOL

The "San Remo" name crops up all over Falcons throughout the years on all sorts of frames. The Equipe I mention was the team version in all 531, chrome forks, lugs and rear triangle.

Shaun

 

[Littlefish]

Re:

Thanks for this - nice to have confirmation from someone who was around then. I'm not surprised at your comments re Falcon - I have a copy of Frank Clements' autobiography (Ernie Clements' younger brother) and if he is to be believed, Ernie C ran the entire Falcon business on the principle of 'make it up as you go along' - including hiring and firing his own family. And the Falcon catalogues of the time seem to show.. how can I put this... a lack of consistency in range planning, model names, model numbers etc. All over the shop, in other words.

 

[Midlife]

Hi, seems like you have Falcon sussed already. Our Falcon rep was Billy Holmes, Commonwealth road medallist. Nice guy and helped me a lot, ran the Falcon team but a salesman he wasn't. Luckily the bikes sold themselves.

I had a look at that book on Amazon, twenty odd quid so will look at the eBook version, sounds liked a good read

My avatar is my Falcon team frame, taken from the production line by Billy and painted Giro D'Italia pink. Happy days

Shaun

 

[Southcoast]

Re:

It seems hard to find information on Falcons of this period. I have a falcon that is from around 1980 and it is different to yours, it has no wrap around seat stay.

If you look at the falcon page on the Classicrendezvous web site, your falcon would appear to from the early 70's. The model I have is the red bike listed as a 80's Falcon.

I am not sure what model of Falcon I have, but I think it ran from about 78 to 82. My bike has French lugs and bottom bracket and the sticker just says CroMo. I think the tubing may be tange!

But with Falcon who really knows? it is possible that your model may have been produced at the same time.

 

[Littlefish]

Re:

Thanks for that - it all helps. I have a 1974 Falcon catalogue in which some bikes have wraparound seat stays and some don't, some are 531 and some aren't (but on the ones which aren't 531, it doesn't tell us what the tubing is), and the model numbers seem to have been chosen by a bingo caller. Any chance you could post a picture of the frame number on yours, just to compare with mine?