This page is strictly work in progress – more of a space holder at this time.
I decided it was necessary to record some of the component information that I could not find elsewhere and the idea started when I was looking for a handlebar stem to match the one on Ian Steel’s 1951 Tour of Britain winning Viking. I couldn’t identify it and then quite by chance came upon one the same and it was identified with the name “LENCO” which turns out to be the name of the Lozells ENgineering CO of Birmingham. There is not a lot of information out there.
Other notable suppliers of British race bike components are, of course:
- GB
- Constrictor
- Benelux
- Chater Lea
- Dunlop
- British Hub Co
- Williams
and loads more that will likely come to mind as we proceed. These parts were shipped all over the world on British lightweights, but it has to be said that they probably had little impact on the professional cycling world outside the UK. So whereas the British were using all the “Continental” components, it is probably true to say that they were not using British components, if they had even heard of them, other than Reynolds tubes of course, which were ubiquitous,but this is intended to be more about the parts that are hung on frames, rather than the parts that make frames.
It should also be said that most British components are covered by the classiclightweights.co.uk website, which officially frowns upon the “factory” bikes, which we consider more significant, and concentrates on British lightweights, which we consider a fascinating backwater of cycling history, but a backwater nonetheless, and, strangely, on Italian bikes, most of which come out of factories. Go figure. But their webmaster has been doing a commendable job for lots of years and built up a wealth of information that is a valuable resource for many classic bike enthusiasts. If you do get anything out of this site, please thank the webmaster of classiclightweights.co.uk, because he rejected a 1960s Falcon team bike on his site, on the grounds that it was a “factory bike”, giving me the idea of providing a haven for these more significant machines.