Restored Memories

Just this last week I received an email from Jim Taylor, owner of a bike store called “Grindin’ Gears Bikes n’ Boards, in Lloydminster, Alberta, Canada. Jim had come into possession of a “project” bike as he referred to it. A custom ‘dave moulton’ frame, that he intends to restore, and ride himself. 

I reached for my frame numbers record book, a little hardcover notebook where I recorded frame numbers of custom frames built from 1982 to 1986. When I moved my shop from San Marcos to Temecula, California, the book got misplaced during the move, and it is a small miracle that it survived and I still have it today.

This frame number is 1835, it is a 62 cm. frame. Custom frame numbers represent the date it was built.

This one was built in January 1983 and it was the 5th frame built that month.

It was ordered through Two-Wheel Transit Authority, a bike store in Huntington Beach, California. (Orange County, South of LA.)

A huge bike store that was housed in a building that was formerly a Bowling Alley.

Jim tells me that the original customer’s name is on the frame, Paul Johnson. The bike was picked up in Palm Springs, California, and brought to Alberta by a customer of “Grindin’ Gears. Sadly, the bike has been neglected for many years, probably stored in an outside barn, or shed.

Looking at my frame numbers book (Above.) brought back a lot of memories. In early 1983 I was still working out of the Masi shop in San Marcos. Previously working for Masi until the end of 1981 when I was laid off because of an overstock of Masi frames and a downturn in the economy.

In a bad economy there are always people who have money, and believe it or not one can survive making a high end product, where the issue is not the price but the quality, and even more important is delivering the product in a timely manner. I would build and deliver a custom frame in as little as two weeks.

Last frame built 1982. (See book page above.) Owner David Ball

I sold my frames through a network of bike dealers across the US. Dealers originally contacted by cold calling on the phone. The bike dealers loved it because they not only made a markup on the frame, the made money on the components, and labor to build wheels, and assemble the bike.

Frame #1834Selling though dealers gave me the quantity of orders that I could not have achieved by selling direct to individuals.

By January 1983 I had so many orders to fill, I was working 18 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week.

The pages in my book shows, I built 10 custom frames that month. February (A short month.) I built 7 more frames, and March another 11.

It had become obvious that I needed to get out of the Masi shop, and into my own facility. I did this by July 1983. Altogether in 1983, I built 96 custom frames, plus by the end of the year another 200 John Howard frames.

Frame #1839Looking back, it was a lot of work, but the repartition of building so many frames made me a better framebuilder.

It also made me faster so I could build even more, at the height of production I built 500 Fuso frames a year.

By then I did have employees doing much of the prep and finish work, plus I had a full-time painter. In the eary years I also did my own painting. Everything shown on this page, I painted.

The only problem was, when the demand for road frames dropped, it was no longer viable to keep going. By then I was burned out anyway.

Frame #2831Was it all worth it? You bet it was. There is a whole legacy of frames still out there, still being enjoyed by their owners. I still put in a lot of hours, writing this blog and maintaining my Bike Registry. However, I am a firm believer that a person should have a purpose in life.

Nearly every email I get starts something like this: “To be honest I had never heard of you or the Fuso, until I found this bike and looked it up online.” So, without all the time I spend promoting the brand now, all the hours I worked back then would be wasted, and many of these frames I sweated over would be in landfills.

#2832 Original owner Chuck Schmidt. Used regularly and still in mint condition. Also shown below.Throughout this article I have shown other bikes built around January/February 1983. Below is a track frame #2833 built for Jim Zimmerman and raced on the Trexlertown track in PA. Later it was bought and used as a "Work bike" by the late "Fast Eddie Williams, renowned bike messenger in New York City. (Below.) (Read articles here.)

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1976 UK built custom

Just the last week on the Dave Moulton Bikes, Facebook group page, this custom frame showed up. Built in 1976, posted by its current owner Mark Awford. Mark inherited the bike from his uncle. and lives in Worcester, England, which is where the frame was built.

I still have my original frame numbers record book (See below.) This frame a 21 inch number M6178 along with the 22 ½ inch number M6177 above it, were sold to someone named O’Keefe and shipped to Alaska.  On the page it appears “Ontario” was written, then scribbled out and “Alaska” written in. 

I shipped a number of frames to Alaska during the 1970s. The customer’s that bought them were workers on the Alaskan Oil Pipeline, being constructed at that time. These men were earning large amounts of money and were in a remote area with nowhere to spend it. It all started when one of these workers wrote to me and ordered a complete bike. From that came orders from other pipeline workers.

If this bike was indeed shipped to Alaska, and I have no reason to doubt that it was, I find it a strange and almost bizarre coincidence that the bike should end up back in Worcester. All my Alaskan orders were for complete bikes, whereas most of my domestic orders were for frames only.

This one still has its original wheels. The rims have a “Built by Andy Thompson” sticker on them. (See below.) Andy, an excellent wheel builder, often worked for me in my shop, and it is his handwriting in my frame numbers book for this particular order.

A word about the finish, this frame has its original paint. The contrasting color head tube and bands around the seat tube were typical of English frames built in the 1970s, simply masked off with strips of one inch masking tape

However, the thin black lines and the precise lug lining, were the work of Les Schrivens, a local bike rider who with his father were sign writers by trade. These lines and stripes were all hand panted with a brush. Another Les Schrivens feature was the little motive he did on the seat-stay top eyes. Each one was unique and different for every frame. (See below.) It is a little feature that only the UK built frames have.

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Back from the Classic Rendezvous Weekend

It was such a joy to attend the Classic Rendezvous Weekend event in Greensboro, North Carolina.  I always look to these events as an opportunity to meet old friends and make new ones. I did plenty of that.

It was also great to be reunited with many examples of my past work, and to talk with the owners. Most had corresponded via email for years, but this was the first time we had met face to face, and to actually shake hands.

For example, a 1983 custom Criterium bike, #9832. Built for the Interbike Show that year. I had corresponded with at least three different owners for the last 15 years, but last weekend got to meet the current owner John Ames. (Picture above.) Also this was the first time I had laid eyes or hands on this bike since it was picked up by one of my dealers after the Interbike Show some 35 years ago.

John has done a fine job of restoring this bike to its former glory, while keeping the original paint finish. Skillfully mixing paint and touching in the tiny chips with a brush. The result is the bike has character, a story to tell, (Read here.) but still retaining its original beauty.

Contrastingly, 1st. Generation Fuso #171, built in San Marcos, CA. in the first six months of production. Now owned by John Majors, (Above.) who bought the frame with paint and decals in as pristine condition as the day it left my shop. Like going back in time and buying a brand new frame. Makes me wonder, how many more unused gems are still out there waiting to be found.

I had met John Majors and his wife a few years ago when they  visited Charleston. It was nice to reunite with them both again.

Peter Stock (Above.) had traveled from his home in Toronto, Canada, He brought his built in 1989 Fuso FRX #1643. His bike it appears is even more traveled, it has a French Bike Shop sticker on it. This is one of two Fuso bikes owned by Peter. This one he has owned since 2010, the other he picked up in 2013. We had corresponded before, but met for the first time at the CR Weekend.

Thanks to Dale Brown, of Cycles De Oro, Wayne Bingham, and others who make this event happen.

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Museum Piece

1985 was a busy year for me. My San Marcos, California shop had been open for two years, I had attended the Interbike Trade show several years and as a result I was building a network of bicycle dealers throughout California, and across the USA.

My big seller was the Fuso. Introduced a year earlier in 1984, just one model that I now refer to as the 1st. Generation model. I built over 500 Fuso frames that year. I has a team of 5 employees who prepared materials for me, so I could just stand and braze frames all day.

With all this repartition I could braze cleanly enough that the frames needed only a minimum clean up to be ready for sand-blasting and paint. My employees did this clean up, and I also had a full time painter.

1985 was also the year the Recherché was introduced, and I built an unknown number of these too. I also built just a few custom ‘dave moulton’ frames that year, nine to be exact. Built one at a time and doing all the work myself, including the paint, these frames were somewhat disruptive to the work flow of everything else.   

However, these frames commanded a top dollar price tag, and it was satisfying to have the opportunity to build something special, like this one pictured here.

The order came from Daniel Boone Cycles, in Houston, Texas. It was built for an up and coming young attorney.

Most of these custom frames went to attorneys, doctors or others with the discretionary income to be able to afford the cost of all this extra work. Some five or six years later, this same attorney moved west to California, where he later became Los Angeles District Attorney.

Before he left Houston he sold the bike back to Daniel Boone Cycles. In 1993, which incidentally was the year I left the bike business, the bike was bought by Russell Rollins who wrote about the experience here.

Russell recently wrote on the “Dave Moulton Bikes Facebook Page:”

The bike is in The Houston Bicycle Museum where it belongs. I miss riding it but I felt it should be seen by others and Dave's story should be known. It is beautiful to see and even more beautiful to experience the ride. Dave told me he built the bikes to ride, not to be pieces of art. I understand his philosophy but life looks a little different from "our" point of view.

By “our point of view,” Russell means of course, the DM bike enthusiasts. My own POV has also changed slightly. Many of the bikes I built are being ridden, which brings me a great deal of joy and satisfaction. Others sit in garages and basements waiting to be discovered.

For something like this that I put so many hours labor into it, is rare enough that possibly it is where it should be. In the Houston Bicycle Museum.

The two things that determine the way the bike feels when riding it. The design, and the fact that the frame was built straight. All the beautiful paint and chrome is just aesthetics, a modest Fuso or Recherché will feel exactly the same to ride. And for a fraction of the price of this one.

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1970s TT Bike

Fag paper clearances. (British slang for cigarette paper.) Meaning the rear wheel was so close to the seat tube that you could barely get a cigarette paper between the tire and the frame tube. See the picture above.

This was an extreme fashion fad in the UK during the mid-1970s especially on time trial bikes. It served no useful purpose except to make the chainstays shorter thereby saving a little weight, and making the rear triangle a little stiffer. The frames were usually built using vertical rear dropouts to achieve the close clearance.

When fads like this become fashion a framebuilder can do little but follow the latest trend, or lose business. I was no different. However, I did not follow the extremes of some framebuilders who built these frames with clearances so close you had to deflate the rear tire to get the wheel in and out. This bordered on the ridiculous. 

Some built frames with extremely steep head angles so the front wheel barely cleared the down tube. This was a part of the trend I refused to follow, as it made for some very “squirrelly” bikes. The last thing a rider needs is a squirrelly time trial bike, a TT bike needs to hold a straight line.

I remember one frame (not one of mine.) brought to me for repair. The down tube and top tube were bent. My first question was, “What did you hit?” The owner replied, “Nothing, I slowed to take a corner, and the frame collapsed under me.”

When I inspected the frame the first thing I noticed was a black rubber tire mark under the down tube right where the tube folded. It became clear to me what had happened. The front wheel was so close to the down tube that when the rider applied the front brake there was enough flex that the front wheel touched the down tube.

Maybe his headset was a little loose, whatever the cause, once the front wheel touched it would have stopped the bike very quickly and the forward momentum folded the frame. I replaced the top and down tubes, making sure to make the head angle a little shallower, making for a little more front wheel clearance.

The bike pictured at the top was one I built for John Patston, an international class rider who represented Great Britain on their national team. In the above picture, John Patston is leading, followed by Paul Carbutt, and Pete Hall. (All on ‘dave moulton’ frames.)

The forth rider Grant Thomas is obscured behind Patston. This was the British Team riding in the 1975 World Championship 100 km. Team Time Trial event.

John Patston was primarily a road rider, very strong and aggressive, often riding away from the opposition to win solo. If others stayed with him, he would usually win the finishing sprint. He was also an excellent time trialist. 

I received a great deal of publicity from this particular bike. It featured in the British “Cycling” magazine. (Affectionately known by cyclists throughout the UK, as “The Comic.”) 

I can’t remember whether the bike was built in Columbus or Reynolds tubing, but the complete bike built up with Campagnolo titanium components, weighed in a 19 lbs. Pretty light for 1977 when this was built.

The bike was also featured in “The Penguin Book of the Bicycle” published in 1978. (Left.) The same photo shown at the top was used for the title page as the book was opened. (See below.) 

My name on the frame's down tube was airbrushed from the picture, as were the spokes from the wheels to make room for the title text. However, the same picture appeared again later in the book on page 97, this time with my name intact.

The frame was painted black and had gold pin striping on the edges of the lugs. It also had John’s initials “JP” painted in gold on the seatstay caps.

Cycling magazine could not mention John Patston by name because of the strick ametuer status rules of that time. (Although most readers could figure out who JP was.) However, the magazine drew an interesting parallel, one that I had not realized when I chose that particular color scheme.

The British tobacco giant “John Player,” also with initials JP, sponsored a Grand Prix racing team at that time. The cars built by Lotus were painted black with gold lettering.

This article was first posted in March 2008

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