• Yes, i remember the discussions on that one, and often see RT badged as Holdsworths. I have been looking back over the shop built holdsworths and the RT ones in 74/75 invariably have windows in the lugs and often short seat stay caps. We do see RT with 69xxx numbers and one of those has windows, but as the sequential part is high it could well be from early 70's as per the discussions around yours. I am coming to the view that typically Holdsworth did not use windows except late Pro.s, they also tended to use std. stay caps with the fastback exceptions on TT style frames.

    Looks like RT continued building his own frames after 75 when Holdsworth went to the 6D system from the factory. Roy's seems to be using 5 or possibly 6 digits some with letters and built from the shop using the frames builders of the day as mentioned above. We did have some odd frames not able to be identified which I initially put in the Falcon Holdsworth group due to the letters and high numbers. But now I am inclined to think they too are part of the RT group as they also have windows. This leaves the Falcons without windows and std. stay attachment all built in 531C tubing as far as I can see. Moving these odd frames gets them into the right time period and cleans up the other groups nicely.

    With this frame here I think the seat stays are similar to the description of the RT Cometizione which is the only one in the catalog to have the stays mentioned, the other bikes have more commonly seen attachments. Also the Holdworth 531 Special has a similar attachment and is a bit of a one off. The windows are the same as RT used on later frames and the general geometry is the same as my other 69xxx shop Sprint, only the angle could be one deg steeper as the RT Comp. I don't think the 70's catalog shows recess brake bolts so think this frame is later than the 70's, but still likely to be a RT?. The only remaining question is the short number? I can only assume it comes from shortly after some reset and the options for that would be 1976 or 1984 when Marlboro bought the factory and the shop was stand alone. I am therefore more inclined to go with 80's particularly as it came badged with a Holdsworth decal of the period. I've not found a 80's RT catalog, but believe things were more bespoke customer build at that time..

    Bit long winded, but running out of other option to follow.

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