Blue, lugged mystery, from Brill

This will be arriving over the weekend
Picture from the ad is all I have
Bought on a hunch for £50
There is Record and Super Record in there
Quite excite

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Nice find! Oil port on the BB shell and likely GB Hiduminium stem points to 1950s ish - bet there's a cool bike hiding under the cobwebs and rattlecan paint job

Cheers man!
Definitely right on the stem, bars are ‘Primo’ or something, levers are also GB (reports son who collected it)
The previous owner’s wife couldn’t recall what it is, but did remember her husband going to the Midlands to collect it
The irony if it happens to be a Planet lol

bargain. nice project.

:)

Hmm
So, the bb has has ‘4 56 2’ stamped
A quick scratch of the tubes reveals nothing much, so the powdercoat must have obliterated anything previous
The rear mech is a complete 1st generation Record with the original jockey wheels… so that’s quite a thing
Super fine pencil seat stays
Really nice lugs, look like Oscar Egg
Bars are PRIMO GIRO DE SICILY engraved
Am really looking forward to bringing this back :)

Well, this just keeps on giving
Nothing is seized, everything moves freely
I think that’s a first for me
The hammerite brush coat seems also to have kept the frame in good nick
Unfortunately it looks like bare metal underneath, so still none the wiser
Will start a photo dump in a bit, apologies;)

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Lugs, etc

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GB equipment

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Williams(?) chainset, Lyotard pedals, Brookes toeclips

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Campagnolo hubs with skewers, Weinmann 27’s, quite true

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And this….

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Really not my the bicycling decade I am into, but apart from the hideous paint (literally) jobby, it really looks like a very fun and satisfying project!

From the photos it looks like WD40, Bartape, tyre pressure and go

Tyres seem to be holding air, will try and take it for a pootle around the park later

lol, you made your 50 back pretty easily then :)

Deserves an old Brooks Swallow.

Have a nice Milremo that I was going to use on another 50’s project, then thought it could work on here, but a Swallow’s a good idea

I know right :)

Nice find Mr R. I think this deserves repaint at some stage to bring it back to old glory, nothing fancy needed, think like Record mech and wheels have already 'paid' for it 😁

BTW, check steerer tube if serial matches- or perhaps better visibility of numbers

Yes, I think it deserves a lick of proper paint, will check the numbers when I take everything apart :)

I've looked closely at your pics, and I agree with the others that you got a bargain.

But what you've got is an odd mixture from some one's parts bin; nothing much matches.
From the point of view of use this doesn't matter - I certainly don't worry about it for my own bikes, but it means there's not likely to be much future in looking for the history.

Just two examples: Nice old GB levers combined with perfectly good Weinmann calipers.
More striking, a Williams C34 chainset (perfectly good, in its way) with that desirable Campag rear mech! No one would have put those two together on a new bike, in any decade.

Indentifying the frame: difficult to impossible, I'd say - you don't even know what area it came from and it hasn't got any really notable features. Better to concentrate on deciding whether you actually like it, and what sort of quality it has. So as you said you would, try it on the road - make allowance for those crappy tyres which would make the best of frames feel sluggish.

As to quality, surely the very first thing to check is the size of the seat pin: 27.2 mm = 531 DB. There are some quality frames with 26.8, but in general below that size forget it, unless it's something of real historical interest.

Anyway you've got some good kit there, the question should be: which suits the frame better, the Williams chainset or the Campag rear mech?

So many dilemmas and good i.d. On the chainset, thank you!
Have to get a battery for my verniers so will check that seatpost later
Last owner (in fact the only previous owner) lived in Cornwall, so as too provenance, who knows!
I quite like the odd-ball arrangement so if the frame-n-fork turnout to be gaspipe, will swap everything out to the Pintail. Which, tbh, was the first thought when I spotted this :)
Cheers Clubman, as always!

Stick it on FB Mystery Bike Frames group and ask them to ID the frame, there are some real knowledgeable people on there 🚲

The Brooks in Snoops sale thread might be nice, could be chopped?