Dan
I suspect that your Claud Butler is older than you think.
According to the sage Mick Butler, the first tow digits of the serial number are the year, the next is the month. Thus '531' signifies January 1953, not the frame tubing. Mick's original post:
http://search.bikelist.org/
I have a frame that is very similar to the one you describe:
http://tinyurl.com/
Regards David Benson Auckland, NZ
dan polito <thepandle@hotmail.com> wrote: ok, so i'm trying to pinpoint (or come as close as i can) the model/year of my CB.
i've searched through all the catalogs available to me on the web, and definitely cannot id the bike via picture recognition. unfortunately, i don't have a picture of my CB. but, i can tell you that the "claud butler" logo is BLOCK lettering, all caps, not script lettering. the lettering is on the downtube, and also down the seat tube. check this 1980 holdsworth mistral.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/
the lettering on my CB looks exactly like that, which makes sense as holdsworth owned the claud butler name at that time.
i've also found out that the claud butler "dalesman" was more or less the equivalent of the holdsworth minstral, and was introduced in 1982.
so, it would make sense that my bike is a 1982 claud butler dalesman.
BUT (there's always a but, huh?) there are two things which sort of throw this off. 1) my CB has track/straight rear dropouts, and in neither the holdsworth line nor CB line can i find either a mistral track or a dalesman track at this time period. so, that's a little strange.
2) my CB has a nervex lugset picked out in black. i believe nervex professional, but am not positive. all the information from the CB catalogs from 1968 and later shows that the CB frames were made with prugnat lugs, not nervex. so that's also a little strange.
as far as serial numbers go, i couldn't really find any information for a CB serial list. on the bottom bracket shell on my CB is stamped "nervex," then a really small 15 digit number underneath (nervex patent number?), then "531" (reynolds) and then "78."
so, i'm thinking that the clue might be in the lugs. if there's a certain year/model of CBs that were made with nervex instead of prugnat, than this may be the "track" or "sprint" version of that model. otherwise, i'm clueless.
any CBphiles out there that can help me?
dan "who's older, me or the bike?" polito cleveland, ohio.
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