About Ebykr
Ebykr celebrates classic and vintage lightweight bicycles through provocative imagery and opinion. Ride along with us.
A practical guide to dating a vintage Motobécane: telling the French bicycles from MBK and the modern imports, what the frame stamps may mean, and how the 1979 catalog, the tubing and the components date the bicycle.
A practical guide to dating a vintage Bianchi: why its frame number cannot give you a year, and how the tubing, the transfers, the components and Bianchi's own catalogs from 1912 to the late 1980s can.
A practical guide to dating a vintage Schwinn: telling a Chicago-built Schwinn from a Paramount and an import, finding the frame number, reading it with the right table and confirming the year with the catalogs and the components.
A practical guide to dating vintage Campagnolo parts from the firm's own catalogs of about 1951 to 1986: when each model came and went, the changes you can measure on the part and what the numbers, the patent words and the address on a catalog or a box can tell you.
A practical guide to dating an Idéale saddle — why there is no date code, what the initials on the badge tell you, which models arrived when, how the alloy stamps and the rodée main mark narrow the window and how to date the paper.
A practical guide to identifying and dating Mafac brakes — why there is no date code to rely on, how the Racer's arm markings changed, which models arrived when and how to read Mafac's own three-digit lever code.
A practical guide to dating a vintage Fuji — finding and reading the serial number that carries its build month and year, telling the build year from the model year and confirming it all against the model, the decals, the components and the catalogs.
A practical guide to reading a Reynolds transfer — what each mark actually guarantees, how its small print and the tube it names date a frame and how to tell a respray from a reproduction, drawn from Reynolds' own literature of 1972 to 1990.
A practical guide to dating a Pierce bicycle from Buffalo — what the head badge says about who built it, why the first two digits are not the year, where a frame number sits on the ladder of dated examples, what the model numbers mean and which features arrived when.
Brooks has been making saddles under the same name since 1866, in a range that has changed slowly and looked similar throughout. That is wonderful for riders and awkward for anyone holding a saddle and wondering what it is. Two…
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