dirttorpedo
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Beautiful build. Great photos. Thanks for sharing.
The return of the Romax (finished page 3)
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A bit of an update on this one, for those who haven't lost interest...
Paul could never confirm a build date based on the serial number (#1426), as he had a gap in his records around this time. The serial number suggests an early 1991 build date, but the details never really seemed to stack up. According to Paul, the last ever Romax was built in February 1990, plus this frame has a matching fillet brazed unicrown fork, which Paul had stopped building long before. A couple of guesses were that someone had wanted to replicate a Romax they had previously owned, or perhaps one that they dreamed of but could never afford at the time. Anyway we had reached a dead end, so that was that...or so we thought.
Fast forward a few years and it was still something we couldn't quite let go of. @Si_33 had always wondered if there was some kind of connection with #426, which was built for Mike Truelove's then girlfriend, Kathleen. Ian Ritz from Chromag had kindly given me Mike Truelove's email address a few months previous, so Simon emailed him, on the off chance there was some kind of connection.
Mike was able to confirm that it was almost certainly Kathleen's old bike. The rear brake noodle was brazed onto the opposite side so that she could use the rear brake whilst playing polo. Mike was fairly new at Brodie at that time, so the "1" was placed in front of the 426, to signify it was "different".
So it turns out that this 1991 Romax is actually a 16.5" Romax, built by Mike Truelove "with probably a lot of help from Paul" in August 1988. Mystery solved.
Paul could never confirm a build date based on the serial number (#1426), as he had a gap in his records around this time. The serial number suggests an early 1991 build date, but the details never really seemed to stack up. According to Paul, the last ever Romax was built in February 1990, plus this frame has a matching fillet brazed unicrown fork, which Paul had stopped building long before. A couple of guesses were that someone had wanted to replicate a Romax they had previously owned, or perhaps one that they dreamed of but could never afford at the time. Anyway we had reached a dead end, so that was that...or so we thought.
Fast forward a few years and it was still something we couldn't quite let go of. @Si_33 had always wondered if there was some kind of connection with #426, which was built for Mike Truelove's then girlfriend, Kathleen. Ian Ritz from Chromag had kindly given me Mike Truelove's email address a few months previous, so Simon emailed him, on the off chance there was some kind of connection.
Mike was able to confirm that it was almost certainly Kathleen's old bike. The rear brake noodle was brazed onto the opposite side so that she could use the rear brake whilst playing polo. Mike was fairly new at Brodie at that time, so the "1" was placed in front of the 426, to signify it was "different".
So it turns out that this 1991 Romax is actually a 16.5" Romax, built by Mike Truelove "with probably a lot of help from Paul" in August 1988. Mystery solved.
So great to find out the correct/accurate background for this one 
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