Gray Area

Like speeding on the freeway.

More vintage bike porn

I came across this beautifully restored vintage Dursley Pedersen. Aside from the unusual frame design I like the overbuilt fork "crown" and the brass bottom bracket shell with oil port. That must've been tough to braze.





The whole design is rather baroque, quite unlike the spare pragmatic elegance of the Rene Herse tourer I posted earlier. Surprisingly such things are still produced.

Gold Nuggets for Edgar

In honor of Edgar's now-defunct toilet blog, I've come up with some sweet finds. First, there's this tricycle:



Some folks from countries where squat toilets are common have trouble adapting to things in the US.



How about a jet propelled outhouse?



Finally, this one reminded me of an outhouse at the top of Bear Tooth Pass that has a "Watch For Ice" sign over the door.

Vintage bike porn

Via an old bookmark, I rediscovered this 1950 Rene Herse touring bike. All of the equpiment is original including the racks, fenders, pump, and light. You can't walk into a shop today and buy something set up like that.



This bike must predate the advice to carry at least 50% of a touring load on the front wheel. A rack mounted to the cantilever posts like that probably can't carry much weight.



Instead of having a return spring, the Cyclo rear derailleur is operated by a pull-pull cable like Positron (remember those? I didn't think so). It rotates on a helical post which causes it to move in and out. The large spring extending forward from the upper pulley controls chain tension. Apparently these units are very reliable and shift well by the standards of their time, but only cope with a narrow range of rear gears. I'm not sure what the C shaped braze-on over the derailleur mount is for.



The hand-operated front derailleur looks pretty crude but shifts over a wider range than most modern ones will handle well. Note the nicely finished cotterless cranks, which would've been very unusual at the time. Most bikes sold in the US still had cottered cranks 20 years later.



I'm puzzled by the headlight. The bike doesn't have a generator hub or any provision for a bottle generator and wiring. The owner could always mount a clamp-on bottle generator and sort out the wiring themselves, but it seems like an odd thing to leave off of such an otherwise complete package.

It's geared too narrow for my needs, it probably shifts a lot worse than modern equipment, and replacement parts are just about impossible to find, but I want one anyway.