07 January 2019 - Coast Ride Jack Taylor + Build date confirmation

I was out this afternoon for a jaunt round the coast before meeting Heather and Caleb at a friends next to Dunnett Beach.
Weather turned nice after lunch and while I have been riding the Jack Taylor in this setup for a while I really must get round to stripping it down and changing components to more suitable pieces. With this in mind I was riding along trying to figure out what to change, to make it far more usable than the Dura Ace 8 that is currently on it. It is great kit but more for racing than the more relaxed touring/randonneur type riding I enjoy these days.  I have some stuff stored away waiting but really just deciding on gearing and chainset. The stuff aside is some Nitto B36 bars and Nitto stem, Stronglight A9 headset, keep the Mafac racer brakes but use my Mafac levers.
Anyway it was a nice meander without really having any destination in mind when I set out. Just enjoying the sun despite the cold, sun is always good even if the temps are still around 2 degree.

I also received a bit more information on the Jack Taylor this past week from the JT appreciation Facebook page. The only real information I had was pretty scant to be honest as the previous owner Adam, who I gratefully got it from had purchased it secondhand many years ago when he was at University in Durham. The owner he purchased it from had owned it from new but that's about all Adam could tell me. He did a good few miles on it in his earlier days but then he put it away in the chicken shed where it stayed until I took on the job of putting it back into use. The build date I had from the frame and fork numbers was from the excellent Bluebird Jack Taylor website. Well it seems that Ken Taylor had been speaking to one of the members and had loaned the build books/ledgers for what looks to be all the years to allow them to be photographed and put online for the members to see and use, and sure enough there was the Super Clubman #7885 with a build date of 12/02/1982, 21 inch built by Norman.  The Bluebird site had it down as a 1983 so it was good to get a correct year date but even better was getting the specific build date.

Hope everyone else had a good weekend.

Jamie