History of Graham Weigh

Anyone know much about them?

A little light googling does not bring much up.

Graham Weigh is/was the owner of Deeside Cycles, and the shop sold their own brand of frame which were badged as Graham Weigh. I'm not sure who built the frames. The shop was in Shotton I think, on the banks of the River Dee.

used to specialise in Women's race frames I think, were great frames, reasonably priced, but sometimes garish!

As above, was Deeside Cycles, but went out of business around 2005/6. Now reborn as Graham Weigh cycles, AFAIK their frames are standard made in Taiwan stuff similar to Ribble et al.

The reason I ask is that my better half has just purchased a 753 Graham Weigh frame and wanted to find out the year it was made and a little history etc.

She phoned Graham Weigh cycles but apparently they had little to no interest in telling her anything about the frame- other than to say they stopped using 753 in the early nineties.

I nearly bought a bike from them when I first got into road cycling. It was in the Z team colours, so a lovely mix of red, yellow and blue. Gorgeous.

Back then I imagine they had the frames built locally as there was still an active framebuilding industry in the UK, especially on Merseyside.

The name Paul Donohue keeps popping up when searching for the builder of GW frames.

I've always thought they had a decent reputation.

is there any builders left around merseyside?

I had a Graham Weigh badged Vitus 979 Frame circa mid > late 80s so I presume they did OEM frames too?
Wish I had kept it....

@gogosama - This is a pretty good list of framebuilders in the UK http://www.framebuilding.com/custom_uk_bicycle_framebuilders.htm

Doesn't have any in Merseyside. A few in Lancs tho...

As I understand it, Reynolds would only sell a framebuilder 753 tubing after the builder had built a frame with a tubeset and it had passed their rigorous quality control. This was due to the level of difficulty of building with a high end tubeset like 753.

So regardless of the name, it was built by an artisan builder of some description.

I have a 531 milleneum Graham Weigh frame bought at the Mildenhall Rally in 2000, was built up as a 24 speed Audax bike before the fixed bug bit me, currently built as a TT bike;

im truly gutted there are no framebuilders left in merseyside
i really want to annoy them till i can be apprentied

Paul Donohue definitely used to build frames for Graham Weigh. But i'm not sure how much 'custom' stuff they do these days, with many of their frames being rebranded Dolans or stuff from the far east.
I grew up in North Wales, and it was only about 4 miles away, although my interest in the store has only really flourished in the past few years, with my dad buying all sorts of things in there, as they get second hand bikes in from time to time. The guys in there are decent, but i can't imagine it's the sort of place that'd keep records of old frames and so on. Nice shop though, definitely worth a visit if passing. The whole upstairs is dedicated mainly to road bikes and accessories, but with a few odd fixed wheels in there, as they seem to get a lot of trade from people going over to Manchester velodrome.

Their shop on eBay frequently offers interesting/bargainous items.

with many of their frames being rebranded Dolans.

In the process of building up a cyclocross frame, I bought off the EBay site, as a winter/workhorse. Looks like a Dolan to me. Bloody nice frame for the money though (rear rack and mudguard fittings). They also have alu dolan track frames for £80. I had brilliant service from them, throughout what turned out to be a difficult purchase (norwegian customs :( ).

im truly gutted there are no framebuilders left in merseyside
i really want to annoy them till i can be apprentied

It's not far to Skelmersdale and Steve Goff:
http://www.steve-goff-frames.co.uk/contact.shtml

I worked for Deeside Cycles in the 90's in Coppull, Lancs. Their frames were not made locally. They were mostly just mass produced Reynolds tubed frames, though they were high quality and more expensive / custom options were available if you had the money. Some of those bikes that came out of there were £‎10,000 plus. Made to order with the finest group sets by Shimano and Campagnolo. Wheels were also made to order and spoked as desired.

Paul (that I worked with) was a master wheel builder that worked for Ribble before Deeside and I believe he either set up on his own after Deeside or went back to Ribble. We used to race each other. I would pick the rims, hubs, spokes and lace the wheels together and he would tighten / true the wheels. Once I had a set laced up, I would start another set and I had to try keep up with him. He was incredibly fast and VERY skilled.

I never knew this thread existed! Here's my likely Paul Donohue built 531 Graham Weigh.

In the past I've emailed Graham Weigh cycles about the frame (non-original forks), & got an interesting reply, possibly from the man himself.

stopped UK production in 93 , after that all the frames were made in Taiwan [as was the Reynolds tubing] as we also started to concentrate on building alloy and alloy/carbon frames .
At the time, when I had 4 colour pages in CW every week and went live on the new fangled internet , we were selling around 50 frames/bikes a week worldwide plus I supplied at least 10 shops with blank frames thru my wholesale business .
The factory was working 6 days a week to fulfil demand [also made for Border Cycles and for Paul himself ]so total production was higher, possibly 4000 pa . I had 3 full time wheel builders just for Deeside Cycles !
Actually could be amongst the last of my UK built frames, although Mick Cowle carried on making Columbus SL and SLX frames for me as he had a cheap chroming factory , there are still a lot of them about , same frames the Kazaks used in the 93 Milk Race ,
I finalised Taiwan manufacturing deal in April 93 and disassociated with Donohue soon after.

Corroborates a lot of your experience, @user152271

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