[CR] Tony Oppermann's unidentified English frame.

(Example: History)

Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 11:51:59 +0100
From: "Norris Lockley" <nlockley73@googlemail.com>
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Subject: [CR] Tony Oppermann's unidentified English frame.


This could be the product of any number of 1950s UK frame-builders and its a pity that Tony hasn't taken a photo of the seat cluster as often these can identify a frame.

However I think that there is enough evidence to be able to put a name to the builder without too much doubt..and about 95% certainty.

The rear drop-out are Clements...designed by Ernie Clements, a former road racing cyclist, from the 40s period - he won a silver medal in the 1948 Olympics -whose picture used to grace the opening page of Classicrendezvous. He went on to become a frame-builder, to have his own bike shop...then eventually, sometime in the 50s-70s graduated to becoming the Chairman or CE of Falcon Industries with a chauffeur-driven Roller, as stories go..and then fell from grace..and ended up back in his own bike shop in Ledbury Shropshire, on the England-Wales border..not a bad place at all to end up. He died at the age of 83 in Feb 2006, having spent much of his life at Old Oak just a stone's throw away from where he had been born. He was a very colourful fellow.

The lugs are Oscar Egg Super Champion ones, model SC1 I think, that have been tweaked a little ie the lugs, when straight out of the packet did not have any windows in the head-lugs.

The Clements ends were not all that popular with frame-builders, but they were probably the first British product to have an integral gear eye, intended to accept the British Cyclo Benelux mech. Around the same time drop-outs such as Simplex and to a lesser extent,Campagnolo were becoming available. As I type this contri there is a very attractive Ernie Clements Masssed Start frame leaning up against the office wall about four feet away from me.

The drop-outs on tony's frame could have had the gear eye removed.... I recal dismembering an Ellis-Briggs International in the same way about forty-five years ago...or perhaps the eyeless drop-eye was a rarity.

Quite a few original Ernie Clements frames are turning up at bike jumbles and occasionally on UK ebay, but beware of later Clements..from around the late 70s as these are often rebadged mid-range Falcons.

The frame number on Tony's bike - 2159 - is typical of one from a small-scale builder and I would dare suggest that this is the 11th frame built in 1959

Norris Lockley, Settle UK...a long way from the Welsh border and too near the Scottish one.