Judging by the tube diameters (1” top tube, 1 1/8” seat tube) and the lugwork (Nervex Pro, Series II with “rings” retained on head lugs; and the Vagner fork crown) as well as the dropouts (Campagnolo forged, early version with the small drilled spring retainer hole on rear mech hanger) it looks like a high end frame set (most likely built of Reynolds 531 tubing) with braze-ons for touring, e.g. cantilever brake bosses, brake cable stops on down-tube to accommodate bar-end shifter setup, etc.

Frame number is 5545, which may as well suggest a 1965 Carpenter frame, according to numbering nomenclature on Carpenters.

I had to scrape the paint off of the underside of the BB shell, as it was completely hidden under the paint when I bought the frame. The matching frame number on the fork steerer was also masked by the grime when the frameset arrived, the frameset was sold as ‘no-name’.

It has obviously been repainted (not too nicely) in a light purple/yellow scheme and bears possibly the name of the owner/team/racer(?) who used the bike, as I have not found any such names on-line (A.R. Elliott on top tube and Ho(?)g Lee on down tube) corresponding to any known British frame builder.

I have also found traces of original paint/colour within the head tube suggesting that the frame was originally painted to some kind of “Bianchi-like” light pastel green.

The frame is certainly built to British specs in all respect: 68mm English threaded BB, rear end OLD is 126mm and 96.4mm at the front, takes 27.2mm seat post and 1” head fittings, incl. 22.2mm stem quill. The only oddity is that the forks take a crown race with 26.8mm inner diameter; that’s less than the old standard (27.0mm) and more than bog standard ISO (26.4mm). Notwithstanding that, I had a rusty Tange headset laying around from a 1970s Dawes tourer with an 26.8mm crown race which fits perfectly, so I assume that some touring frames came with this relatively odd crown size.

Herczeg Gabor

(from Hungary)