Friday 20 May 2011

The Viscount is head of the badges.

So after an epic break in posting, here's a little something to keep the gears spinning, the pedals turning and all moving parts well greased. I only keep this blog for fun and to share the cool stuff, so when my work load goes crazy, I don't want it to become another chore.

But here's a Viscount head badge!

Neat neat neat! Normal posting will resume soon, with the usual mix of retro, vintage and weird bikes, as well as three new bike builds and details of an exciting pan-European bike trip!

Ride old bikes forever!

Tuesday 5 April 2011

Peugeot Nouveau Folding Shopper Bike

Another bike from the bike sale on the green today. This one's a little 20 inch wheeled folding shopper bike from Peugeot... the Nouveau!

One of the nicest old Peugeot logos I've seen for a while.

Some 'Nouveau' touches!

Old Peugeot bike lettering.

And a neat little lamp.

A sensible vintage Peugeot folder!

Tuesday 29 March 2011

Hercules carries on commuting

A good old fashioned bike logo for you today, from Hercules bike co. One of the local second hand bike shops brought their stock onto the Nottingham campus the other day, and this old 'commuter' stood out as the oldest... and most interesting!


Tatty but rad logo on the headtube.


Declaring its commuter intentions.

A nice old piece of steel. That should serve someone well for many a year yet.

Thursday 24 March 2011

Dave Quinn fixed gear retro dose

A crazy work schedule is keeping me away from the Bicycle Safari at the moment, but here's a little retro fixed gear treat for you. I've posted an awesome looking Harry Quinn bike before, but this is a Dave Quinn frame, and I don't fully understand the relationship between the two. Maybe someone will chip in on the comments!

Really nice lettering, just like on the Harry Quinn frame.

Yep!

A nice little touch on the seat stays.


A neat classic looking modern bike!

Saturday 19 March 2011

Peugeot Raider, classic day-glo mountain bike

This is the first vintage Peugeot mountain bike I've come across though, which makes a change from the usual Peugeot classic town or road bike.

A great old Peugeot bike logo on the head tube.

This one is the Peugeot Raider.

Again being built with the Peugeot direct brazing system, that I have seen before!

Neat neat neat. I feel like some of the day-glo-ness of the colour might have been lost with time, but you can feel it's something a bit bold!

Monday 14 March 2011

Yeoman Envoy is diplomatic about its job

Continuing the never ending trawl through the world of obscure bicycle brands, today we have a Yeoman Envoy to take a look at!

Super clean design on the headbadge logo. Quite unlike most of the other much busier old bicycle logos of the 70s and 80s.

This particular one is a 20 inch wheeled, folding shopper bike. This were strangely popular back in the day in Britain, I guess because of their low cost and ability to tuck away in an awkward place.

Whoever owns this one certainly seems to want to hold on to it judging by the big lock on a small bike!

A neat little vintage bike!

Wednesday 9 March 2011

Classic Triumph Racing Bike

Here's a nice slice of classic British racing bicycle for you today. It's an old Triumph, looking resplendent in red!

Awesome old fashioned head badge up front.

Some nicely ageing vintage lettering on the down tube.

A very nicely looked after bike!

With some graphics that look like they're spanning the gap between the classic striped graphics of the 60s and 70s and pushing into the more fluid abstraction of the 80s and 90s! Thanks to some recent good weather here in Nottingham, the bike racks are filling up with interesting steel, dragged from people's sheds. So expect some more good bikes soon!

Thursday 3 March 2011

Classic Condor, a lugged, hacked and loved? bike

Using an old bike as a daily commuter is very cool. It's sustainable, practical and sometimes classy. Especially when you've got a sweet lugged classic Condor frame like this!

The usual rad head badge logo!

Twice!

I say it's a nice Condor frame, because some of the great details like this hand painted seat stay end.

And old Condor logo text, don't seem to fit with what you see on the rest of the bike!

Sticking out from the cockpit like a branch off a tree, is this bar grip shifter! A strange addition to a classic road bike you might think.

But when you've added a modern internal hubbed gear on the back too, it makes a bit more sense! How great to keep an older bike going through the modernisation and upgrade of some select parts! Ride Old Bikes Forever!

Monday 28 February 2011

A Human Powered Vision of the Future

Regulars here at the Bicycle Safari will notice the two new ad banners on the pages for Vision of the Future. But rather than this being some smart company buying in on the ground floor, it's my new project! I had the idea for making a shirt celebrating the choice of being human powered, whilst maybe staying a bit more stylish for the bicycle lane fashion parade, knocking around for a while, and it felt like the time to give it a try and see how it goes!

They're printed on sweat-shop labour free ringspun cotton t-shirts, and are screen printed by hand in the UK using only waterbased inks to avoid the toxic by products of chemical printing inks.

It's called Vision of the Future, and have a click over the new site, to see what you think!





Friday 25 February 2011

How to find a puncture using a mudguard

Here's a little change of pace from the usual old bike logos that make up the bread and butter of The Bicycle Safari. It's a little trick I stumbled into when my Hateful Raleigh Beater bike took a puncture yesterday morning. Strangely I haven't heard of it as a tip before, and google isn't showing much, so maybe this will be new to you too!

Rear tire was completely flat when I went to take the bike out, so tried my usual tactic of re- inflating the tube and seeing if I could hear the air coming out from anywhere. Unfortunately, no luck, and I didn't fancy taking the wheel and tyre off to do a more thorough job of finding the hole. But then I had a little brain wave.

Being my everyday commuter, it's got proper mudguards (fenders, if you like) and the rear one is a decent tyre enclosing full length affair. So I fetched a glass of water, and with the bike upside down, filled the fender!

My fender runneth over!

With a quick spin of the wheel, a tell-tale stream of little bubbles appeared from a near imperceivable hole in the tyre, now submerged in my flooded fender!

So then I was able to lever off that one section, pull the tube out for a quick patching, then back together for a speedy repair! Pulling this trick off with the much shorter front mudguard would be a bit more challenging, but maybe one day this little hack will help you out!

Wednesday 23 February 2011

When your bike meets a snow plow!

A while back I shared a picture of a bike absolutely buried in a snow drift in snowy Sweden. At the time I joked this might be a good alternative to a lock, because no one's going to bother digging your bike out. Well here's the retort to that idea...


As spring starts to melt the giant snow drifts left by the snow plows in Sweden, this mangled wreck appears out of the ice.


I guess this is why...

...you shouldn't trust your bike to be safe in the snow!

Monday 21 February 2011

Is it an old bike, or is this just retro?

Pashley are a strange bicycle make, as they remain as basically the only large scale domestic bike manufacturer in the UK, but their dominant product are bikes modelled on old bikes.


Which makes it strange when you see a Pashley, because you don't know if it's an old Pashley bike form back in the day, or a modern version which is built almost exactly the same.


The rod brakes on this one makes me think it is at least a few decades old, but who knows.


The Concorde Lepper saddle from Holland does answer anyone's questions.

Friday 18 February 2011

When Car Companies Build Bikes

A great number of car companies have dabbled in bicycle production. In fact it's where a few car companies started out from! These companies might be better thought of transport companies, and some have held a very good reputation in the push bike world for their products. You only need to look at The Bicycle Safari's long archive of classic Peugeot bikes to see what I mean.

But there are also some surprises in car-to-bike production, such as the not very convincing looking Bugatti bicycle I saw back in Lund, Sweden. But here are two more that I've spotted around Nottingham, England.

Kia might not be the first people you think of when looking for a bike, and I guess this was a promotional tie-in, or give away bike. The slogan 'Think before you drive' though.... well, maybe that wasn't the best slogan for a car company to use!


Kia bicycle, wants you to reconsider driving your Kia car.


Quality wise... not so great either.


Daewoo on the other hand were a sprawling company to begin with, covering car to firearm production. So the appearance of a Daewoo bike probably shouldn't be too suprising.


It's another uninspiring mountain bike, so beloved by anyone looking for a bicycle in Britain in the 1990's. It does claim however to be a genius.


Maybe the secret plan was for people to find cycling these so dull that they would get back in their cars!