Elswick Hopper- the Lincoln Imp

Every now and then a fantastic bike arrives. Being fantastic doesn't often carry with it an equivilent pricetag, rather the real value is in the life of the bike and the story it has to tell.







Today I took ownership of Lilly's Lincoln Imp, a battered and dusty racer which had been worked hard and now was feeling a little tired. Older bikes tend to have grown with their owners, they show the repairs and changes in a way that more modern bikes don't tend to. I'm pretty certain this is because they come from a time not so long ago when things were reused and repaired rather than simply replaced.




Although some parts of the frame look to be hand painted, when I brushed away the oily wood dust and looked a little closer i discovered a bike which had campagnolo gears, a beautiful reynolds 531 frame (with lovely lugs) and a Coventry made Middlemores saddle.






It also has the most fantastic Flip- Flop rear wheel, with single and five speed blocks.







The Lincoln Imp showcased Elswick Cycles at their best, sadly Elswick went the same way as most British cycle companies after the 1960's decline. Somewhere in the 1980's after a stream of relaunches and new owners it finally ceased trading as a cycle brand.

You can find out alot more information about Elswicks Lincoln Imp through the Hopper project and on Sheldon Brown's Elswick page.

what a difference a day makes

Lisa has been after a 'dutch' bike for quite some time now- after a recent trip to London (where she saw beautiful bike wherever she looked) she spent the afternoon on Ebay looking for a local bargain. We've looked before but to be honest there are very few bargains to be had on ebay and usually anything vaguely swoopy gets very expensive very quickly. Oddly when she looked this time she found a bike and it was just down the way in Kenilworth, it only had a few minutes left so she bid on it and won it for the princely sum of £20.

To be honest, at £20 I wasn't expecting very much, a further conversation with the owner revealed that since getting a puncture last year it had lived outside( through the winter) leaning on a woodpile waiting for someone to fix it. Anyway, when i picked it up it looked like this:

Complete with cobwebs!

A poke around revealed rotten cables, seized gears, ruined tyres and a broken seat, wherever chrome had been there was now a healthy smattering of rust and flakey chrome- on the upside all the bearing were fine as were the brakes and the frame and paintwork just needed a wipedown.

So I spent the day today removing the broken bits, cleaning rust, fixing puctures and putting it all back together again- now it looks like this:

Beautiful, swoopy and best of all cheap!