Vintage polo bikes rescued!

Great bikes , but would a mountain bike wheel not be too small and leave a large gap?

No, they all should have 26" wheels. Very wide rims too.

but 26 x 1 3/8 like a westwood,endrick or westrick..? modern mtb is smaller..

a good few years ago, a kind sole bough a load of new wheels for the polo bikes....however they were all the wrong size...he bought 700c they should be 26"...whether old 26, new 26 or 650 is probably irrelevant as there are no brakes...

Some of the wheels in the photos are 700c, that's because I did manage to get a few of the new wheels into the front forks....if I had them right at the bottom of the fork dropout and did the nuts up super-tight....stlll minimal clearance though and mud collected....

Think we'll have to get some new rears built around old hubs (mosyly 40 hole) and may need to buy some new hubs.....have found 3mm spokes......but if we get enough old second-hand fronts we can just use until f**ked then replace.....

Thanks for the wheel - build help offered...I gurantee you will have seen nothing like the surviving wheels before in you life!

the bins round brixton are usually teaming with old halfords death traps that the yoots have got fed up with when they loose their sheen, will keep my eye out for wheels.

Very cool. I'd love to help...

i have a bunch of MTB bits and wheels in the backyard.. feel free to take anything you need.

keen to help but i'm away now until the end of august so i dunn if i'll be much use.

Just found a 26" downstairs, let me know when to bring it somewhere.

i would love to help on this and i got 3 or 4 sets of old flat pedals and a old 40h fixed/free hub i could donate, and FAR too much free time

i would love to help and have some free time on me hands. give me a shout.

any news on this? Offer of help still open

Hey, got some old Mavic x221 (36h x 26") rims if you want them. They're still in the packaging and bugger all use to me.

Chris

they're very busy at the moment. but when i spoke with caspar in manchester he said it wouldn't be that far away!

Hello Winston. This is excellent news that the polo bikes are being restored. I used to play on these bikes years ago at HH as a youngster. Happy to lend a hand restoring and work in a bike shop so have access to strange stuff to fix them up. Be the wheels knackered? They have a lot of spoked in them and most will probably need rebuilding. One guy tried using 36h MTB rims but the ball kept getting stuck in them and plain gauge spokes weren't thick enough. DT Alpine would be best bet. This was the trickiest part of fixing them we found. How is it going so far?

We are working on it. We have managed to source some thick (3mm) spokes, I reckon that these, on 36 hole rims, will do the trick as far as keeping the ball out.

Basically we are waiting for some storage space to become available as we've outgrown my little unit in the Rollapaluza HQ in Whitechapel. As soon as storage is sorted, over the next few weeks (fingers crossed) we'll be in a much better position to get the next restoration of the bikes sorted.

dude if you need i got room... kinda for 2 bikes? Whitechapel also.

I bet you have shins!

What kind of mug do you take me for ;)

We'll be keeping all the bikes together, restoring them and using them for there intended purpose, grass court polo.

Well worth a go.

when does the grass court polo start then ? spring '09 ?

I was playing grass court polo today, on one of those bikes actually(not specifically). It is great fun, plus!!!!!!!!!!!!! No road rash from falling. I live in Ireland(the starting place of the sport) and we just use the horse polo grounds in the Pheonix park. If there is any around in London I suggest you try sort something out. The bikes are great to ride, about a 1-1 ratio on them, take a little getting used to. But seriously dont be pickey about the wheels etc going on the bikes, I was riding with a front wheel with about 2cm of wobble either way and no problems.

Got any photo's Stein?

Even better than that:YouTube - bicycle polo ireland
And fyi:http://www.irishbicyclepolo.com/

Rollapaluza have secured storage for these bikes at Herne Hill and will be taking them back there soon, then we'll be inviting all those who've shown an interest to come down and do what we can to get them going....next step...sort out the lumpy pitch in the infield!

This is an amazing thread! Well done rollapalooza for saving these bikes.

I like the idea of asking the horsey polo people if we can use their pitches! Not sure how that would go down... maybe in Ireland polo has less of an elite identity than here.

Well the elitist polo players are here too. Grounds being restricted to polo only. But it still is polo so try talk it over with them, it would be worth it. We use one of their sheds and leave all the bikes there, grounds are maintained by them so its all good. All you would need to get is some shin guards mallets(I assume you have already) and hurling helmets are ideal. Really its the best place to play it, injuries are limited to falling on a bike and mallet hits.