Cycling UK Forum

riding in this morning i thought about how old my hope rear hub is. i reckon it's 15 years old now and is on it's third rim. never been serviced and has been ridden in all sorts of weather. still spins well.

now that got me thinking...it's fairly old given today's throw-away kit but i reckon it's a mere baby against some kit still out there in regular use.

what have you got....?

The nut on the saddle

My submission; 32h front dynohub. I've owned it for over 30 years and I've stuck over 30000 miles on it. It was old when I got it, but still had the factory grease in it. The bearings have been inspected once, then lubed subsequently via the lube port. I guess the bearings have been adjusted twice whilst I've used it.

It is still in regular use; several hundred miles in the last month.

The hub was built in 1957, and lives outdoors. (It is older than the nut holding the handlebars BTW)

I bet someone can beat that easily though.

cheers

My submission; 32h front dynohub. I've owned it for over 30 years and I've stuck over 30000 miles on it. It was old when I got it, but still had the factory grease in it. The bearings have been inspected once, then lubed subsequently via the lube port. I guess the bearings have been adjusted twice whilst I've used it.

It is still in regular use; several hundred miles in the last month.

The hub was built in 1957, and lives outdoors. (It is older than the nut holding the handlebars BTW)

I bet someone can beat that easily though.

cheers

Which is amazing in itself and just goes to show they often did make things better then. Quality pays for itself in the end.

The oldest barely functioning lump on my bike is me, followed by my saddle bag and a lamp bracket that I made in nineteen hundred & frozen to death, which follows me round from steed to steed. but all that doesn’t beat Brucey's venerable generator.

mig wrote:i reckon it's 15 years old now and is on it's third rim.

Pretty much brand new. I have rims of that age, let alone hubs.

The oldest part I use regularly is a front hub bought in the mid 1960s. I used to have equipment from the 50s but housing/country moves in the 1990s meant I had to thin equipment out a bit. All the old parts I have or had are quality parts. When work mates were buying go faster stripes for their cars I was buying Campag hubs.

What we think of as old parts changes with age. In my 20s I seldom kept a frame more than a few years. Now I am 60 I consider the frame I bought in 1986 to still be pretty new. I've had many other frames since then of course, but that one is the oldest in my current stable.

I started riding in 1958 when learned to ride a bike (age 13.) Most of my stuff was secondhand so it will have been older than that. When I retired in 1997 (age 52) I dumped various bits and pieces which had been swapped about between the hierarchy of hacks, such as a GB Stem and Maes bars. Several pairs of MAFAC brakes went the same way

I still have fitted to bikes:

1. a Karrimor Uplift saddlebag thingy acquired secondhand when I started cycling, which accompanied me on nearly all my YHA/ camping tours in my youth and later did a lot on one day rides and commuting.

2 a pair of Campag bar end controls. (Swapped for some DT levers with somebody who didn't like them in 1959.) They used to be my pride and joy - always on my "best" bike till I went over to STI but they are a PITA to service and I've limped home more than once with a broken cable.

I've all sorts of bits of junk in the "it may come in useful category" but none of that is on bikes.

I've just remembered that when I retired, I built a bike just to use on rollers, mainly out of old bits. That has a GB stem (of the short "girder" pattern) and GB bars. The front wheel is out of the Ark. A quick shuftie in the garage reveals a back mudguard reflector which carbon dating techniques suggests is from those far-off days. I bought it around 10 years ago from Ellis Briggs IIRC but it was NOS. As in "It's a long time since anybody asked for one of those but we've got some somewhere."

tatanab wrote:

mig wrote:i reckon it's 15 years old now and is on it's third rim.

Pretty much brand new. I have rims of that age, let alone hubs.

i use the rims on my bike though !

I ride a 1930s Elswick-Hopper, not everyday but on a reasonably regular basis.

I had (until last year) 20 year old brake pads in use.
OK - they were in drum brakes... If I rebuild them into a wheel at any point they'll carry on working 'til rapture.

There are probably a good number of very old SA hubs in use by the toggle chain gang - whether it counts as regular use or not I don't know.

mig wrote:

tatanab wrote:

mig wrote:i reckon it's 15 years old now and is on it's third rim.

Pretty much brand new. I have rims of that age, let alone hubs.

i use the rims on my bike though !

My rims do not wear out much because of where and how I ride - solo rural riding so I do not use brakes much. Also, my oldest rims are on of my fixed or on a trike so the rears have never seen a brake. I also have a number of machines to spread the wear. Same applies to chainrings. I have chainrings from about 1990 with barely any wear since they are the small rings on a triple. Until I sold it last year I had a pump that I recall buying in 1974.

i go to work every day on a '57 BSA. the AW hub on it is a more modern thing though - '81

My Mercian frame is (only) 26 years old. Still in use on it are the Cinelli 64 bars and 1R stem, and the Campag Victory seat post - all brand new when I built the bike up. I still have the Victory DT levers in my spares box.

Barbarella has a Stronglight 99 chainset on her that dates back to 1985.

The atoms in my bike have been around for over 13 billion years.

gaz wrote:The atoms in my bike have been around for over 13 billion years.

c'mon now!!