Listmembers,
This is a great story Hon. You've nicely filled in the missing pieces of how the bike was dressed and appeared back in the day. Recreating the bike should not be too difficult for Jacques Gabus with the exception of the bivalent hubs. (Gabus, you know those will cost you if you can find them) The A. Singer shop still sells the AS stems made to order for 300 euro including engraving. I notice that the frame does not have brazed on pieces for the racks, just eyelets for the mudguards. How did you attach the racks and panniers, Hon? I cannot tell from the photos.
Did Spence outfit the derailleur with his special lower cage or use a straightaway Nuovo Record and did he equip the bike with any other Spence Wolf tidbits? If the former, David Cooper had some cages made up to convert a Nuovo Record rear derailleur into a Spence Wolf version. The original SW derailleurs are hard to find.
Hon, did you have any photos of your bike? Jack, let's hear your plans for restoration?
Mike Schmidt Millington, NJ USA
On 5/26/10 12:13 AM, "Hon Lee" <lejosun@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Dale and Jack have graciously permitted me to recount a moment of history that
> seems to me to be the stuff of Cycling's version of Oprah Winfrey. Here it is
> as I sent to Dale, with a postscript:
>
> Unbelievable bit of news: Jack Gabus seems to have purchased what used to be
> my Alex Singer frame at a garage sale in Riverside, CA.
> He just sent me a note asking if I ever owned such a frame, and included a
> page from Spence Wolf's bicycle sales journal noting A. Singer serial number
> 1375 frameset, sold to Hon Lee in May of 1971...he also included two pics of
> its current condition: bare frame and fork, grey primer. I could see no
> dents or dings in the frame, and all the lugging and fork crown looked so
> clean, crisp, thinned. It was a startling experience. I sold it in 1978 to
> pay for Grad School II to a student in a private school in Danville, CA. So
> what happened in 32 years that left it so anonymously clad in grey primer,
> sans hs, bb, Campagnolo crankset, seatpost, Ideale cutaway, Singer stem,
> Cinelli bars and bivalent wheels with Nisi rims, Mafacs, front and rear
> pannieres, white paint, decals and gold lug lining??? It's all so remarkable.
>
> Jack, it seems, spotted an announcement on Craigslist , twice, and followed
> up, purchasing this 40 year old tidbit. We managed to speak for a moment,
> enough to ascertain that the frame is structurally just fine, but the
> accoutrements such as that fabled Singer stem were shattered....indeed a very,
> very worthy project. It's the stuff of CR fable: Jack contacted Guy Apple
> regarding the serial number and finds me here on CR. I'm just beside myself
> with a kind of fuzzy joy, made all the fuzzier by the blurry memories of 1978
> and braced with the heady anticipation that the restoration will feature a
> collective Hurrah here on CR.
>
> Hon Lee
> Stockton, California
> Vereinigten Staaten