I found a guy here in Houston who had a bunch of bikes for sale on CL. He said he was buyinig them from auctions around town - mainly storage places selling off stored items when the bills weren't paid. So I ran over to his place and checked out what he had for sale. He had a couple of kids bikes, a couple of road bikes, a couple of mountain bikes, and this 3 speed women's bike that I bought.
The sticker on it says "Made in Western Germany" and it has a lugged frame or at least the neck.
The neck has a stick on head badge which just says "EUROPE" on it, and a larger sticker on one of the tubes says "Classic".
It has a "Torpedo" shifter and 3 speed rear end - which look a lot like a SA - only it has no coaster brake built in.
It has a few rusty spots on the frame here and there - like it was ridden on a salty street or sat outside around a salty street at some point. Otherwise, it appears to be in fairly decent shape and the guy let me have it for $20, so I couldn't pass it up. Heck, it even came with a bell.
I just got it home so I need to play with it some to see if it rides okay, shifts okay, stops, etc.
So I now have a new toy to play with - as if I needed one, haha.
** I just ran across this posting on the internet related to the Sachs Torpedo rear hub. According to this, it was a good find ...**
In the late 1950s, the best post-war three speed was born, the new Sachs Torpedo with the red shifter. When I was young, everybody had it. There was no bike shop without spare parts for it. It was stronger and more reliable than any planetary gears hub in current production. Sachs was able to sell these for an amazingly long time with the cheap junk bikes of the 1960/70s. In the last production years, this made funny bikes. In the "great era of bike-junk", the rear hub would have been able to outlast five bikes. Sachs could do this for the legendary name, most people who bought junk bikes still wanted a Torpedo hub.
On bulk rubbish days, there was an easy rule: "If the rear hub of a trashed bike is a Sachs Torpedo or Renak, take it. If it is Sachs Komet, Sachs Jet, Sturmey Archer, or Shimano, leave it."
The sticker on it says "Made in Western Germany" and it has a lugged frame or at least the neck.
The neck has a stick on head badge which just says "EUROPE" on it, and a larger sticker on one of the tubes says "Classic".
It has a "Torpedo" shifter and 3 speed rear end - which look a lot like a SA - only it has no coaster brake built in.
It has a few rusty spots on the frame here and there - like it was ridden on a salty street or sat outside around a salty street at some point. Otherwise, it appears to be in fairly decent shape and the guy let me have it for $20, so I couldn't pass it up. Heck, it even came with a bell.
I just got it home so I need to play with it some to see if it rides okay, shifts okay, stops, etc.
So I now have a new toy to play with - as if I needed one, haha.
** I just ran across this posting on the internet related to the Sachs Torpedo rear hub. According to this, it was a good find ...**
In the late 1950s, the best post-war three speed was born, the new Sachs Torpedo with the red shifter. When I was young, everybody had it. There was no bike shop without spare parts for it. It was stronger and more reliable than any planetary gears hub in current production. Sachs was able to sell these for an amazingly long time with the cheap junk bikes of the 1960/70s. In the last production years, this made funny bikes. In the "great era of bike-junk", the rear hub would have been able to outlast five bikes. Sachs could do this for the legendary name, most people who bought junk bikes still wanted a Torpedo hub.
On bulk rubbish days, there was an easy rule: "If the rear hub of a trashed bike is a Sachs Torpedo or Renak, take it. If it is Sachs Komet, Sachs Jet, Sturmey Archer, or Shimano, leave it."