group test: path racers

Urban CyClist / 93Pashley speed 5 8ball yeats rab roadster kennedy city bicycles 92 / Urban CyClist

gentlemen racers

Impossibly elegant, inexplicably desirable, a path racer is the perfect choice for the man-about-town

Group test

Words: Jamie Wilkins Photography: Joe Branston & Jonny ashelford

BEST dETailthese illuminati lights are cnc machined from billet aluminium in scotland. they can’t flash and they aren’t especially bright but they’re for short dusk rides not winter commuting

Frame 4130 cromo steel / Fork 4130 cromo steel / Wheels Ryde Racer double-wall aluminium rims, Sturmey Archer sealed-bearing hubs / transmission Sturmey Archer crankset, gearing optional / brakes Acor calipers (2015: Sturmey Archer drums) www.8ballbikes.co.uk

Sweet handling, well-equipped, great looking bike with thoughtful custom options8

through hedges backwards but only you know just how much you crave that vintage feel.

The long stem and more pronounced forward sweep of the moustache handlebar before its rearward curve creates a much more balanced riding position than the Kennedy. In fact, it’s the best resolved of the lot.

The modern, neutral steering is complemented by surprisingly keen acceleration, so you can whip along should the mood take you. The 30mm Schwalbe tyres are a canny choice as they strike a good balance between comfort and speed, usefully adjustable either way with air pressure.

The Sturmey hubs and cranks are impressive items at the price and the rest of the build is good, too. The saddle may be a Brooks clone rather than the real thing but it does a much better job of imitating the comfort than most. The bar-end brake levers look the part and work very well with the Acor calipers. Sturmey drum brakes will likely bring a drop in braking power but it’s a trade-off we’d gladly make unless riding somewhere hilly.

Unlike Pashley and Kennedy, 8Ball allow you to choose your gear ratio or upgrade to a 2-, 3- or 5-speed rear hub. You can also add wooden fenders and a rear carrier. There’s even a vegan build with no leather. That’s thoughtful.

For 2015 the Yeats comes with Sturmey Archer drum brakes, nailing the path racer style

T here’s one thing we need to clear up right away about the 8Ball Yeats – you can ignore the dual-pivot brakes because while this bike was on test

with us, 8Ball upgraded the spec. For 2015 the Yeats comes with Sturmey Archer drum brakes as standard, nailing the path racer style. Caliper brakes will still be an option, though. The price shown is for the 2015 spec with drums.

We first met 8Ball founder James Middleton a year ago, at which point the company was so young that he was celebrating recently selling his 10th bike. Back then 8Ball had several models, various build options and a lower entry price point. However, James noticed that most of his sales were for the Yeats and its sibling, the Orwell (he has a literary fascination), and that most bikes were being specced close to this test bike, so that’s where he is now concentrating his effort.

The frame is of James’s own design and made in the Far East by a highly regarded factory using 4130 cromo steel. The geometry is sound though conventional by today’s standards compared to the incredibly slack angles of the RAB and Pashley. The more we rode these bikes, the more that became a double-edged sword. On the one hand it makes the Yeats the easiest of these bikes to, say, jump onto for a Saturday morning coffee run and immediately feel at ease even if you ride a modern road bike the rest of the week. On the other hand, there’s no denying that it detracts just a little from the experience. It sounds as trite as car journos complaining that modern Porsches lack character because they don’t try to hurl you

Urban CyClist / 95

8ball yeats £800*

group test: path racers

96 / Urban CyClist

group test: path racers

Frame 4130 cromo steel / Fork 4130 cromo steel / Wheels Double-wall aluminium rims / transmission Alloy crank, 44x16t, Sram Automatix 2-speed hub / brakes Promax RC-462 dual-pivot calipers www.kennedycitybicycles.cc

BEST dETailthe wood and leather bar end plugs look like they are from a much more expensive bike and they really complete the finish of the cockpit

Strong value and spec, and it would be a fun city bike with the right bar but it’s no path racer6

T here are some spooky parallels at work here. We first came across Kennedy City Bicycles at the Spin show a year ago… moments after

meeting 8Ball whose stand was about three metres away. The two young companies launched within weeks of each other and also share a postcode in Hoxton, London. Hell, the founders are even both called James. And now they find themselves on adjacent pages.

While there were also similarities in their bikes to start with, it was Kennedy that had the business plan nailed down from the start, resolving to keep it simple. In issue 7 we heard the fascinating story of KCB’s birth by James Kennedy himself, from remortgaging his flat to building bikes in it.

We really like that KCB do everything possible to make the buying process unintimidating and

clear for new cyclists. The website has useful guides for choosing the right frame size and handlebar shape, even including photo galleries of different size riders (with their height stated) on the various combinations of frame and bar. Neat.

KCB offer four colours (maroon, teal, petrol, black), three shades for the saddle and bar tape (honey, walnut, coal) and a choice of a bullhorn, porteur or this ‘swept back’ handlebar. Finally, choose singlespeed or a Sram Automatix two-speed hub as fitted here.

The security bolts on the saddle and seatpost are thoughtful touches (prompted by the theft of a seatpost from a prototype test bike) and the real leather bar tape is a luxury at this price. The saddle is real leather, too, but while it looks the part we didn’t find it very comfortable.

James has something of an obsession with finding the best possible tyres and he has recently swapped to Panracer Pasela PTs which retail for over £20 each. They’re tough and grippy but, at a skinny 23mm, they do make the ride firm.

It’s important to note that this isn’t a dedicated path racer but with this one of the three handlebar options it looks about right and just might be the combination of style and handling that you’ve been searching for. That’s a pretty marginal blend, though, as the frame geometry is surprisingly aggressive and the steering is sharp. It was only later that we remembered James telling us it was modelled on a track bike he’d owned and loved.

For us, that jarred with the very short riding position. The stubby stem and swept bar puts your hands right near your knees. Fitted with the bullhorn handlebar option, or perhaps the porteur, we can easily imagine that the Kennedy makes a really appealing urban bike but dressing up as a path racer doesn’t suit it.

kennedy city bicycles

£590

KCB do everything possible to make the buying process

unintimidating and clear

98 / Urban CyClist

BEST dETailQuick-release skewers are just a fad, you’ll see. What you want is a set of mighty wingnuts. this is a superb finishing touch

Not without niggling issues but so gorgeous to look at and to ride that we love it anyway8

group test: path racers

Urban CyClist / 99

pashley speed 5

£995

A lthough the Speed 5 is the most expensive bike of our quartet, it is (forgive the cliché) ‘a lot of bike for the money’. Demonstrably so, in fact, as

your nine-hundred and ninety-five pounds buys you exactly fifteen kilograms of bicycle. It really is a beast but, for all sorts of reasons, that doesn’t seem to matter.

The Speed 5 is based on Pashley’s Guv’nor and closely modelled on authentic path racers from the early 20th century, the sorts of bikes raced up to World War 1 and for a short while afterwards. Pashley revived this category of bike almost single-handed and the Speed 5, a new model for 2014, remains the only off-the-shelf path racer.

The first time you see it in the metal, it’s truly stunning. The deep British Racing Green paint with gold logos, details and chain is a classic motorsport combination that works perfectly. It wears a Brooks saddle, of course, this one a Swift in black with chrome rails. The bar tape matches.

The angles are quite spectacular; there are cruisers less reclined than this, yet it calls itself a racer. But as soon as you ride away you realise that the riding position is actually quite sporting. The longer stem and shallower sweep to the bars, versus the 8Ball and especially the Kennedy,

means you reach further forward and there’s ample accommodation for a six-foot-one rider on our medium (22.5”) test bike.

The handling is surprisingly neutral given that the fork offset is measured in yards and the wheelbase in miles. You couldn’t call it agile but nor is it ponderous and it certainly isn’t unwilling.

The 38mm tyres are so huge and cosseting that it’s hard to tell if the frame is springy smooth or rock hard. Either way, the Speed 5 smothers everything in its path, up to and including cobbles.

We’re not completely head over heels in love, though. The drum brakes are only adequate, the five-speed hub is awkward to shift and we have to take Pashley’s word for it that there are five gears in there because we couldn’t find them all. On top of that, this bike has a bubble under the toptube sticker and the handlebar slips in the stem even when bolted tight because the clamping surface is smooth rather than knurled.

Charmer that it is, the Pashley makes you forget these annoyances. It’s so damn cool.

The handling is surprisingly neutral given that the fork offset is measured in yards and the wheelbase in miles

Frame Reynolds 531 butted steel / Fork Tubular crown, steel / Wheels 28” alloy Westwood rims, Sturmey Archer hubs / transmission Sugino cranks, Sturmey Archer XLRD-5 speed hub / brakes Sturmey Archer drums www.pashley.co.uk

101 / Urban CyClist100 / Urban CyClist

Frame BSA, steel / Fork BSA, steel / Wheels Mavic rims, Sturmey Archer hubs / transmission BSA crankset, Sturmey Archer Kick-Shift hub / brakes Sturmey Archer drum/coaster www.recycleabike.co.uk

group test: path racers

rabroadster

£600*

BEST dETailthe bsa crank is the original one that came on the bike 80 years ago, lovingly reconditioned by recycle-a-bike

A true path racer reborn, very well executed and a tempting custom alternative7

T his is no homage. This is real. It’s a 1930s BSA, restored, resprayed and rebuilt into a path racer of the utmost authenticity, the highest expression

of a bicycle from the era of its birth. While it’s very unusual to pitch an 80-year-old bike against three new ones, with slim pickings in the shops, we wanted to show an alternative way of achieving a path racer style bike. Inspired by the great work of the Recycle-A-Bike project when we featured them in our last issue, we challenged them to build a path racer. And they excelled themselves.

If you missed our feature, Recycle-A-Bike is a non-profit organisation in London. They breathe new life into old bikes and sell them at affordable prices. RAB is largely staffed by and run for mental health service users, enabling them to learn bike mechanic skills and build social confidence.

This bike was built by RAB’s Peter Messam. He admits that he hadn’t heard of path racers before receiving our challenge but says “I loved the opportunity to show what we can do” and he

set about researching and gathering parts right away.

By luck, a 30s BSA Roadster had recently been donated to RAB. Peter says, “It was in a very poor state but we bead blasted the frame and then powder coated it dark blue.” For maximum authenticity, the bars and stem are period, and the crankset is the bike’s original one. The cleverest bit is the front brake which uses the original rod mechanism to actuate a modern Sturmey Archer drum brake via an adaptor that Peter made.

The rest of the parts are carefully chosen to achieve the right look – stitch-on leather grips, cream Schwalbe Delta Cruiser tyres and the de rigeur Brooks saddle – and they’re very effective. This bike looks spot on.

The ride is where this bike’s authenticity might work against it. Indeed, the pre-war frame is a big chunk of the hefty 14kg total and the combination of toe-clips, kick-shift and a coaster brake makes it a challenge at first but it soon becomes rewarding.

It’s as smooth as the Pashely and it steers equally well on its slack angles. Unlike the Pashley, the Roadster’s gearing works very easily and the kick-shift soon feels natural, though it does shift every time you use the (weak) coaster brake. It isn’t quite as keen to go fast as the Pashley but the RAB has made an interesting point here.

The combination of toe-clips, kick-shift and a coaster brake makes it a

challenge at first but it soon becomes rewarding

102 / Urban CyClist

group test: path racers

roETzvIGOUR €599

a bit like rab, roetz recycle as many parts from old bikes as possible and do some of their manufacturing at sheltered workshops, helping society as well as the environment. the Vigour is single- or 5-speed. www.roetz-bikes.com

paShlEyGUv’NOR £875

With a three-speed hub, the Guv’nor is a slightly more affordable way into Pashley path racer ownership and you may prefer its looks. it rides smoothly and it’s an utter joy.www.pashley.co.uk

Also Consider

cuSTomCOMMISSION £you choose

if you can’t find the right bike off-the-peg, you could always commission a handmade-to- measure frame. it won’t be cheap but you’ll love the result. the bespoked show is a great place to talk to frame builders.www.bespoked.cc

GaraGE 271CHALLENGER€1,099

this German company debuted a year ago, with the challenger at the vanguard. it’s made from 4130 cromoly steel and runs sturmey archer drum brake hubs with a two-speed kick-shift at the rear. the ship everywhere.www.garage271.de

W e went into this test expecting it to split into two halves – the authentic and the replica. That isn’t meant to sound disparaging to the 8Ball and

Kennedy, simply to say that they were dressed in a certain style rather than conceived as path racers; there was a good chance that a modern frame with a vintage look could turn out to be the ideal mix of characteristics. By the time we were done, we’d had lots of preconceptions broken.

First to do that was the 8Ball. It may have a modern heart but it isn’t merely playing at being a path racer and with the spec changes for 2015 8Ball are committed to vintage style and do it well.

The Kennedy impressed us in lots of ways but its overall geometry doesn’t lend itself to the path racer concept or to that particular handlebar. It’s a polished city bike, though, so by all means buy one for that role and enjoy its vivacity.

For the ultimate in authenticity and unlimited custom options, the up-cycled RAB Roadster is a compelling left-field choice. We were amazed at how well it rides, it’s great value and you’d have fun designing it. It’s a moral victory, and an ethical one, too. By choosing a RAB, you’re supporting a good cause and helping the environment.

In the end, though, nothing could quite live up to the Pashley Speed 5. Forget CAD design, this is cad design. It’s a charming bounder of a bicycle. We suspected that it might be the one we coveted the most, and it is; what surprised us was that by the end of our test the Speed 5 was also clearly the bike we wanted to ride the most. It certainly isn’t perfect but it is our winner. It’s the Boss.

the Verdict

l

l

Uc

Nothing could quite live up to the Pashley Speed 5. Forget CAD

design, this is cad design. It’s a charming bounder of a bicycle