Spurred on by friends, I did my first laps at the Augsburg velodrome this winter with my 70th east german Diamant track bike. Obviously the Diamant track bike was a little bit too small, but nevertheless our trip made so much fun, and I decided to build up an appropriate track bike.
Although I found many of the needed parts but unfortunately no suitable frame. The Fixie hype speeded up prices and an eighties track bike I didn´t want at all. At this time I knew nothing about the scene in Britain.
At some point a friend of mine points my nose on an advert from Hilary Stone. Hilary and I get pretty quick an agreement and I got a pretty blue coated 50th frame from London frame builder AA. Hawkes.
At the first look to this frame I not only recognized this lovely old style Nervex lugs, produced before 1955 only, but also brake holes in front and rear.
Therefore it´s not a normal track frame but obviously an original Path Racer frame. But what does Path Racer stands for?
Many cyclists in the 40's due to the 60's couldn´t afford more then one machine. Therefore the one and only lightweight had to serve all purposes; riding to the factory day by day, training in the evenings, racing or taking part in club runs on weekends. The british time-triallist for example would have ordered a frame built to track specification to get a light and responsive frame and then have braze-ons for case mudguard eyes, Lamp boss, pump pegs and rear brake cable eyes added for general use. The frame also ould have been ordered with build in mudguard clearance also.
Just british cycling was characterized by dropouts open towards the rear and riding fixed gear untill the beginning of the seventies. Between 1985 and the 1930 th british cycling knows about track/ path racing, time trialling and club runs.
Due to an erroneous or mistaken description in the 1889 edition of Badminton Cycling Library the word path standing for trip distance or way around the oval course became similar to the word track meaning the oval of the velodrome. Henceforth path and track were the nmost common description for the track of the velodrome and track racing itself.
But back to this lovely AA Hawkes, wich got the following parts:
Bottom Braket: NOS Nervar
Headset: Tange
Crankset: Stronglight Mod. 49D, 165 mm, with T.A. Specialities Track Adaptor and T.A. Specialities Track Chainring
Brake Lever: Altenburger 126S
Brake (front): Universal Extra
Wheelset: British Hub Company Airlite with CBT Italia wooden tubular rims
Saddle: Brooks Competition
Seatpost: candle type in aluminium
Stem: Pivo adustable, chromed steel
Handlebar: chromed steel
Pedals: Lyotard M23 Berthet
Frame tubing: Reynolds 531
Fork tubing: Reynolds 531
On the left side of the top tube an inscription Essex Roads CC can be found, which stands for the still-existing and apparently very active Essex Roads Cycling Club ...
... and on the left side the name B.Davis ...
The following would be the setup the british cyclist would have choosen to ride to a weekend time trialing event, using his training wheels for the ride to this event and carriing his expensive and silk walled wheels with optional sprint carrieres to the velodrome. In the saddle bag he would have carried trousers, another jersey and some tools for repair and mounting mudguards an so on.
Anybody more familiar with the history of AA. Hawkes? Your comments and tipps are highly appreciated.
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