British Eagle

[starkj73]

Caught my eye on ebay. My kind of bike, maybe the bar tape doesn't quite match. Nice thought, eh?

British Eagle Super Vitus 980 Serie Extra Legere super! on eBay (end time  26-Oct-09 18:22:26 GMT)

[onb]

Crikey ,just how tall do you need to be to ride that.??

[MSeries]

6'2"

[Pneumant]

The frame is 23.5 inches in old money. The modern trend is to have a yard or so of seatpost showing, in the old days however this was not the case and seatposts were much shorter back then because of this. I am certainly no daddy long legs - one of my bikes is a 23.5 . I am just under 6 feet in height (with a 34 " inseam). The most important aspect of frame sizing is reach - a small frame will be correspondingly short in the top tube, a long stem to compensate (over 12cm) does not a good fit make.

British Eagle (of Newtown, Powys - part owned by Barry Hoban)  did have a bit of rep for <building frames slightly out of track>, this bike comes with pretty mediocre components and a frame which certainly is NOT superior to 531 IMO

[LEE]

I'm 5'11" and my British Eagle frame was a 23.5".

It was a bit long in the top-tube though and maybe a 22" would have been better.  However, I had it for 23 years and did many miles on it (531ST though).

As Pneumant comments, I didn't have enough seat-post showing to use a Carradice SQR bracket but this was entirely usual at the time.

[fred the great]

The forks appear to be bent slightly backwards

[Torslanda]

I must be a real sucker. That's bloody gorgeous!

If I hadn't just bought two new folders . . .

[Rhys W]

... a frame which certainly is NOT superior to 531 IMO

 Nobody said it was. 

[Lucky]

... a frame which certainly is NOT superior to 531 IMO

 Nobody said it was. 

The listing contains the words

... comparable to Reynolds 531 ...

[perpetual dan]

Sigh. I had something very similar languishing the garage for many years.

[Torslanda]

Kept a watch on this, it ended up making £170.

Not bad, somebody;s going to be very pleased with that.

J