Re: [CR]Argos lugless bike for sale on Ebay

(Example: Production Builders:Teledyne)

Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 17:35:14 +0000
Subject: Re: [CR]Argos lugless bike for sale on Ebay
From: "Hilary Stone" <hilary.stone@blueyonder.co.uk>
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
In-Reply-To: <20031029164102.3810.qmail@web80509.mail.yahoo.com>


This I think is one of the very first Argos frames to be built. From the frame number it can be dated as 1975 - Argos only started in operation the previous year. When I interviewed Arthur Needham, one of the two founders (Hence ARgos, the other founder supplied the second half of the name) a few years ago he told me that a lot of their early production was sent to the USA. Arthur Needham was an engineer who had a successful engineering business and also a cyclist - in the early days of building frames he sought the help and advice of Stan Pike, a top small British framebuilder who had learnt his skills working at Westland helicopters brazing I believe rotor arms. This particular frame is fillet brazed - I do wonder whether ERnie Janes - one of Thanet's framebuilders could have been involved - as the fillets are very small - he built several frames fillet brazing using silver solder. In later years he used to build wheels for Argos but he died quite recently. I can probably check tomorrow with Argos a bit more about this frame as they are normally very particular about their record keeping.

Hilary Stone, Bristol, England

Bradley J Woehl wrote:
> Can anyone here tell me how this Argos frame was constructed? Someone on this
> list has to be interested in this bike.
> http://ebay.com/<blah>