After I got my DL-1 I was happy to find that it was in really good shape. It had been well taken care of. I don't know if there was a long-time owner of it who rode it and maintained it regularly, or whether it was simply stored in a good place for many years. Or perhaps it was carefully cleaned and fixed up prior to it being sold to me.
There were a few things that I needed to do to make it into a rideable bike for me, and two of those things can tell you a lot about a bike's condition.
First, I needed to raise and adjust the saddle, and second, I needed to raise the handlebars. An old bike that has been abused or left out in the weather will usually give you problems with both of these things. Seat posts and stems are, in my experience, the two things that get corroded and tend to seize up on a bike. Sometimes there is almost nothing you can do to resolve this problem. But I was able to raise the saddle easily, and I did this to test ride it, so I knew it was good before I bought the bike.
I was less sure about moving the handlebars. For one thing, this bike has rod brakes, and without any experience with these, I wasn't sure what I was going to get into when I tried to adjust them.
To raise the handlebars on an English Roadster you need to loosen the nuts that connect the rods from the handlebars to the brakes. That's a pretty simple matter, assuming the nuts are not corroded, stripped or rounded off. Mine were fine. I find that a 9mm wrench fits them, though I am pretty sure that they are really a Whitworth standard measurement, and I don't have Whitworth wrenches.
The next step in raising the handlebars is to loosen the stem bolt a bit, at least a quarter-inch or so, then tap it with a hammer (I use a wooden block between the bolt and hammer to prevent marring the surface). This allows the expander wedge to drop down, but still stay connected to the stem bolt. Doing this frees the stem, and allows the handlebars to be moved up. I raised mine as far as I could until I found that the connection for the rod brakes became unstable. I'd really like the bars a little higher still, but any higher and I find that the rods wobble a bit.
I already had a Millbrook saddle bag from another bike, but I knew that it was going to get moved over to the DL-1, and I like how it looks, and I appreciate having a good amount of space for carrying things. This bike is a bit finicky, so I like to have an assortment of tools and repair items with me when I ride it. I've had to make quite a few adjustments while on a ride.
I had hoped that the tires that were on the bike would work out, but knowing the brand to be the very cheapest tires you can buy, I was not optimistic. My suspicions were borne out a few weeks ago when I had my first flat tire while on the trail. It was going to be a long walk no matter what I did, but I was hopeful that I could fix the tire on the spot. The flat was on my back wheel, and knowing the difficulty of removing the wheel, I had already decided to use a patch and try to maneuver the tube out of the tire without removing the wheel from the bike.
Surprisingly, that part of the process went quite well. And I was able to find the hole in the tube rather easily. But what I had not tested at home (and there's certainly a lesson to be learned here) was the authentic, vintage aluminum frame pump which I have on the bike. I had played with it enough to know that it could push air, but I had not actually tested it on a tire. It was a total failure for me.
I was lucky enough that my brother lived close by and came with his pickup and rescued me.
I decided then and there that I wanted to change the tires and tubes to something new. I had been noticing a lot of people with vintage bikes using the Schwalbe Delta Cruiser creme colored tires, and they seem to be well respected. So I made the switch, and I love the new look of the bike. It does make me think about how good a new fully-sprung, honey colored Brooks saddle would look (the one on the bike is the original B-72).
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