The Moulton Bicycle Company has a quantity of new old stock Fichtel & Sachs Duomatic hubs for sale for £75 each.
The big benefit of buying these from Moulton Bicycle Company is that they have been stripped and regreased. You can purchase Duomatic hubs from hubstripping.com or ebay, but you have to regrease the hub yourself.
Moulton Bicycle Company can be contacted at office@moultonbicycles.co.uk or +44 1225 865895. Tell them Moulton Buzz sent you!
The bike that attracted a man from Japan >> South Devon Herald Express
Tuesday, September 09, 2008, 08:07
JAPANESE businessman Tetsuya Shiomi spent £2,000 travelling to Torbay to collect a rare but rusty British bike initially offered on eBay for £1.
The bill was for a 6,000 mile round trip for himself and his wife Atsuk including flights and hotels.
Original owner Bruce Symes, 75, of Galmpton couldn't believe the world-wide interest in the rusty Moulton Speedsix, especially from the Far East.
It was given to him by a friend and only put on the internet auction site at the last minute after being saved from a chuck-it trip to Yalberton tip.
Eventually the Japanese collector topped the bidding at £537 and decided to make it a personal collection trip to Europe — to add to his other six Moultons.
Mr Symes thought it was practically worthless, hence the low starting price on eBay.
The charity supporter says all the money is now going to the Dart Sailability scheme for the disabled, based at Kingswear.
Mr Shiomi revealed: "I have six Moulton bikes already and I saw this one and wanted to add it to my collection.
"It is not a businesses venture but a hobby of mine.
"I love the frames and the shape and they are very popular in my country. I also like Mini Coopers and have one of them too.
"I wanted to collect the bicycle myself and meet Mr Symes and thank him. It was a nice holiday for me and my wife."
Mr Symes said he was delighted to raise any money from it at all. "It was lovely to see it go to a good home.
''The bike was covered in rust and I nearly took it to the scrap heap but now it is travelling to the other side of the world.
''When I saw the winning bid was from Japan obviously I thought I'd be shipping it over there.
''I never thought for a second the new owner would come so far to pick it up." A bidding war developed when beady-eyed collectors had noticed the yellow bike was a rarity the first six-speed bike made in Britain in the 1960s.
Only 600 were ever manufactured.
Furniture dealer Mr Shiomi travelled from his home in Saku-Shi near Nagano to Bruce's house in Galmpton, turning it into a European holiday with his wife.
Experts say there is currently a boom in Japan and China in the trade of English antiques, curios and vehicles such as cars and bikes.
Built in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, the Speedsix was designed for both touring and competition and was billed as a 'lean, mean, speed machine'.
From Times Online
A rusty old bicycle expected to raise just £1 for charity was sold on eBay for more than £500 to a collector in Japan who identified it as a rare British classic.
The yellow bicycle was given to Bruce Symes to raise money for Dart Sailability, a charity for disabled sailors. Mr Bruce, of Galmpton, Devon, gave it a guide price of £1 but bids were soon placed from the Far East – including Taiwan and Korea.
Collectors noticed that the bicycle was a Moulton Speedsix – the first six-speed bicycle made in Britain, with only 600 produced in the 1960s. It was sold for £537.
I recently got hold of some new anti-rotation washers for my Fichtel&Sachs Duomatic hub.
The washers do exactly what they say on the tin... they resist the tendency of the rear axle to rotate under the heavy braking torque.
I found these difficult to source, mainly becuase they are rarely listed in English. They are however listed in the SRAM spare parts catalogue (6Mb PDF).
There are two versions. One version features a pair of lugs that sit in the dropout slot to assist in resisting any rotation. The other type is plain, flat without any extension, with a serrated surface to increase the friction between the washer and the rear dropout.
The SRAM spare parts numbers are :
65 0517 110 10 - Retention washer with extension (Fixierscheibe mit Haltenase, if your googling or ebaying)
65 0517 102 000 - Retention washer without extension (Fixierscheibe ohne Haltenase)
Both are listed on several German bike sites, for less than €1, but the postage costs were extortionate, so I found them on eBay (and ordered with the help of Babelfish translation) at a slightly higher price but with a fair charge for postage and packaging.
I should point out that these washers are for the earlier models with the 10.5mm axle, not the later model with the 9.5mm round axle.
Friction pervades the life of a cyclist.
Photo from Julian Kowalewski's collection on Flickr
Ivan Illich wrote in Toward a History of Needs:
A century ago, the ball-bearing was invented. It reduced the coefficient of friction by a factor of a thousand. By applying a well-calibrated ball-bearing between two Neolithic millstones, a man could now grind in a day what took his ancestors a week. The ball-bearing also made possible the bicycle, allowing the wheel -- probably the last of the great Neolithic inventions -- finally to become useful for self-powered mobility.
But friction is also the primary force which makes cycling possible. Without it, acceleration would be impossible. If somehow, motion was achieved, braking would be impossible, turning the wheel would have no effect and leaning to turn would bring us crashing down. To visualise the role of friction in bicycling, imagine trying to cycle on a lake of polished ice.
Matt Seaton in yesterday's Guardian talks about another type of friction - that between a cyclist and his significant other.
A common one is: "What was in that large box I had to sign for this morning?" Which is a mini-version of the dialogue that runs: "And why do you need a new bike?" This is actually a conversation that can be circumvented, but only at risk of the uncomfortable interrogation that begins: "So, how long have you had this new bike, and when were you proposing to tell me about it?" This naturally segues into a "And how are you paying for this?" inquisition.
My wife frequently declares "you can only cycle on one bike at a time".
One Moultoneer helpfully suggested the best tactic for decieving one's significant other is to purchase bikes that are the same colour as an existing bike. Then, when quizzed, you can declare "but that's the same red bike I have had for ages".
An eBay seller seems to have made some compromises in this department. The listing contains the following nugget:
It is only being sold now because my wife has stamped her little foot, and declared that 17 Moultons is 16 too many.
Though, perhaps the price being requested indicates that he's not really trying to sell at all!
