Identifying old black bicycle

not mine anyway

It looks European to me, hard to tell on my phone though!

I don't believe it's a Raleigh. The front fork is wrong. It's the wrong fork for a Humber, Rudge, Triumph and Hercules too imo, unless it's so old it predates the normal fork design we expect from those companies but my guess would be late 1920s to late 1930s.

Is there no headbadge? Any chance of a photo of the lamp bracket? These are usually a unique design as well.

Have a look at the hubs. British hubs of that period will have an oil port and no lock nuts on the bearing cones.

I can't see well enough to count the spokes but if it's 40 on the back and 32 on the front, then it is almost certainly British as the continentals used 36 back and front. Also, what is the tyre size? 26 x 1 3/8" and 28 x 1 1/2" were used on British roadsters but I wouldn't expect to find them on a continental bike but I may be wrong about that.

As said earlier, manufacturers used to fit their badges rivetted to the head tube. they also stamped unique design into headlamp bracket and on chain wheel, this may be viewed by sliding up the panel just above the crank on the gearcase plate.

piston wrote: »

I don't believe it's a Raleigh. The front fork is wrong. It's the wrong fork for a Humber, Rudge, Triumph and Hercules too imo, unless it's so old it predates the normal fork design we expect from those companies but my guess would be late 1920s to late 1930s.

Is there no headbadge? Any chance of a photo of the lamp bracket? These are usually a unique design as well.

Have a look at the hubs. British hubs of that period will have an oil port and no lock nuts on the bearing cones.

I can't see well enough to count the spokes but if it's 40 on the back and 32 on the front, then it is almost certainly British as the continentals used 36 back and front. Also, what is the tyre size? 26 x 1 3/8" and 28 x 1 1/2" were used on British roadsters but I wouldn't expect to find them on a continental bike but I may be wrong about that.

Hercules came to my mind once I saw the break cantilever set up . I know one of these setup existed at home at one stage . my vote Hercules

You could try and get a frame number of it. Look at the top of the seat tube, around the bottom bracket shell and at the rear drop outs. If you play around online, you will find lists of serial numbers to date old bikes from the more common manufacturers. Even the general form of the number may help. Elswick for example will be a single letter which denotes the year and a serial number.

Edit, you will also find that many of the British bike firms had assembly plants in Ireland in the '30s to the '60s as the market was quite big and by assembling them here, they avoided import tax. "Export" models in completely knocked down form were often different in spec from UK models which you will read about on most websites.

Raleigh were slightly different as they actually had a manufacturing base built in the 1930s, partly in preparation for war as they knew they would have to turn their own factory over to war work and having a factory in neutral Ireland allowed them to export bikes back to their home market during the war and maintain the customer base that many of their competitors lost. The factory burnt down in the mid 1970s and was the biggest insurance payout in the history of the Irish state.

Any pics of the chainring?