Mystery Bike Update

Another thing that was exciting about this recent Tucson trip is that I had planned a visit with legendary bike frame builder, Andy Gilmour. Andy has been building high quality bike frames since the early 70's and is based out of Tucson. I've been trying to identify my "mystery bike" that I recently finished restoring. All I really know about it is that it was built in the early to mid 70's based on the dates on the components, it has high quality parts, and is stamped with the letter "G" in several places. The previous owner told me that he bought the bike in Tucson from another owner. Some internet research lead me to Andy Gilmour and I sent him a few photos of the bike to see if he could identify it. He wasn't able to determine much from the photos but thought that it might be one of his very early builds.

I met up with Andy on Friday the day before the race at his studio. He was kind enough to see me with pretty short notice. Very friendly guy. He spent all of about 45 seconds looking at the geometry, tapping the lugs, looking at the stays before he said "Nope, not one of mine". Bummer :(

He did say that he thought the bike was built by Colin Laing, another Tucson builder of that era that now resides in Phoenix. I asked him what were some of the clues. He pointed at the mismatching lugs and the thickness of the seat stem as primary clues. I don't have the sophisticated eye or experience to know about that stuff yet. He was fairly certain so now I have another clue to follow up on. Well not much more to say. I was hoping for a tour of Andy's studio, but he looked pretty busy so we said thanks and left.

The good news is that I occasionally travel to Phoenix on business and will also be going there in mid January as Christine is going to be running in the Rock n Roll marathon there. I'll take the bike there and see if I can get Colin to look at it.

The mystery continues.