Author: Allison Jordan

Alex Moulton hated the idea that his bicycles would be considered as folding bicycles. He always made the point that his aim was to produce a better bicycle, not a folder. A small proportion of the 1960s Moultons were separable for stowing in the boot of car, as were the majority of his post-1983 spaceframe machines, but Alex never, ever, made a folding bicycle.

A number of people have adapted Moultons into folding bicycles but Alex never did. The question that many Moulton researchers and enthusiasts have asked themselves is “Did he ever, in secrecy, produce a folding prototype?” More than 20 years ago, when I first saw a colour slide in the Moulton archives of the bike featured here, I thought for a few seconds that I had found evidence of just such a machine. But it did not take long to establish that this, too, is a separable machine, albeit a unique variant on the theme.

The original Moulton Stowaway joint, used in a minority of production F-frame Moultons in the 1960s, was very unforgiving if the bike was ridden without the joint bolt being fully tightened. Just one short ride with the bolt loose would distort the joint, making it looser in the vertical plane when ridden yet harder to separate.

In the 1970s, Alex Moulton made a little known attempt to improve the Stowaway joint. The only known example exists in a prototype Mk 4 Moulton. (The Mk 4 was a development of the Mk 3 that never went into production.)

Alex’s aim was to produce a joint that was fail-safe and that would not be damaged if ridden without being fully tightened. The resulting design is shown in the photos below. The front section of the main beam has a primary hook at the lower …

In 1965, Vic Nicholson won 15 major time trials on the Moulton bicycle, was placed in 9 others and won the Reading Track League. In 1967, again on the Moulton, he broke the Birmingham-Bristol-Birmingham record by more than 25 minutes and regained the Cardiff-London record for Moulton by an 18 minute margin.

In this interview, recorded in February 2015, Vic talks to Tony Hadland about his cycle racing career, with special reference to his time on the small-wheeler. The interview is just under 32 minutes long and can be found in the Cycling section of this website. (Hover your mouse pointer over the word “Cycling” in the banner at the head of the page, then click on “Interviews”.) Or you can go straight to the Interviews page via this link:
https://hadland.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/cycling-history-interviews/…

I’ve updated my bibliography. This follows the publication of the fourth edition of Mike Burrows’ book Bicycle Design: towards the perfect machine (which I edited and co-authored) and the reissue of my book The Moulton Bicycle in a new binding as The F-frame Moultons.

You can get to my bibliography via the ‘Talks, books & biography’ tab above or via this direct link: https://hadland.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/tony-hadlands-bibliography/

Bruce D Epperson is, among other things, an eminent American cycle historian. His paper ‘A New Class of Cyclist: Banham’s Bicycle and the Two-wheeled World it didn’t Create’ should be compulsory reading for anybody studying the history of cycling in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s. It appeared in the journal Mobilities, Volume 8, Issue 2, 2013.

Here’s the abstract:

While not uncommon for innovator and innovation to merge into a single identity, it is more unusual for this to occur between object and critic. But it did happen in the 1960’s with a novel small-wheeled bicycle, the Moulton, and the British architecture and design critic Reyner Banham. Banham believed the Moulton would give rise to a new generation of middle-class urban radical cyclists who would eventually come to rely on bicycles for their transport needs. While this did not happen, the Moulton’s attention-getting technology did lead to a revived market in bicycles among young, newly affluent consumers who bought small-wheeled utility bicycles as fashion statements and status symbols.

The article is particular relevant to those interested in the history of Moulton bicycles, the Raleigh cycle company and the Raleigh 20 series of small-wheelers – Raleigh’s biggest selling product line in the mid 1970s.

The article can be purchased online here from the publisher, Taylor & Francis:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17450101.2012.659467#.VRKlAGbEigc

Web of Science provides more information about the article, including contact details for the author:
http://cel.webofknowledge.com/InboundService.do?product=CEL&SID=Y2fRMQ6UGNkDsTUOM53&UT=WOS%3A000317828900005&Src…

Here’s something you don’t see everyday. It’s a UK street-legal moped based on a Raleigh 20 and was created by consulting engineer Chris Sawyer. It has a Cyclemaster engine and front suspension. Apparently it works quite well and it demonstrates the rigidity of the folding version of the bike. Many thanks to Chris for permitting use of his photo.

The Raleigh 20 was the archetypal British city bike of the 1970s and Raleigh’s biggest selling product line in the middle of that decade. The company made up to 140,000 a year and the bike was in production from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. You can read more about it here: https://hadland.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/raleigh-twenty-r20/

Recently I acquired a 1974 Raleigh 20 FE (‘Fully Equipped’) that had been in the same ownership for 40 years and was in almost completely original condition, apart from modest wear and tear. It is a testament to the fitness for purpose of the product that the owner kept it and used it for so long. Here is a photo tour of the bike in question.

A general view of the 1974 Raleigh 20 FE.

A front view. Originally the bike would have had a plastic clip to hold the three cables together in front of the head tube more neatly but these clips tended to fall off and were not really necessary. The headlamp shown here is a replacement but differs only slightly from the original, which still worked, despite having a missing ‘glass’. All Raleigh 20s had a restrictor to stop the bike being ridden with the forks reversed. In models fitted with integral lighting, the stop was combined with the headlamp bracket.

Rear carriers (racks) varied between Raleigh 20 models. Some had none and others had a Pletscher alloy carrier with sprung parcel clips. The FE had a steel carrier with a plastic tray. This helped hold the removable holdall (shopping bag) that came with the bike. It’s rare to see the original holdall and this bike had lost its one. At the front and back of the tray you can see the elasticated cords that held the holdall in …