Help identifying 50's English bike

[KJMUNC]

Had a nice surprise tonight: the story goes that as my grandfather was closing out his Navy career in the 1953, he was on a port call in the BVI's and ran across what he called an "English racer" and decided to bring it back for his daughter (my mother). She learned to ride on it, used it for a decade and passed it on to her six other siblings who all learned to ride on it too. Her sister has kept it all these years, and her brother took it last year and has been restoring it (paint, chrome, rubber, etc), but he's not a bike historian. He believes it's a Raleigh, and best I can find from the Google is it might be a 3-speed Cruiser model.

Best part is that he did it all totally unbeknownst to us as a present for my 11yr old, who happens to be the only granddaughter. She is super excited to get "grandma's bike" and be the next to have a piece of family cycling history. Now I just need to find a way to get it from Oklahoma City to Austin.

Has some cool details....check out those brakes! Sorry for the pic quality....my uncle took them today to show me.

Anyone have any idea what model this is?

[cadence90]

I have no idea what bicycle it is, but that is a great, wonderful story. Really fantastic.
.

[Louis]

What a cool story.

Now I just need to find a way to get it from Oklahoma City to Austin.

Ride it!

Has some cool details....check out those brakes!

When I was a kid my first two bicycles had rod brakes. A bit of a pita to adjust, and getting them to clear each other cleanly in front of the HT as the handlbars went lock-to-lock was also a hassle - at least for me when I was 12 years old.

[charliedid]

Phillips
Raleigh
Pashley

Maybe

[austex]

Fork crown is wrong for a Raleigh. There were any number of makers of British "roadsters" in that era...

[Tandem Rider]

I can't tell brand from the pictures, several British companies made similar bikes, most were black and most have Whitworth threads.
Cool tidbit is the angled chrome bracket on the front that the rod to the front brake passes through is actually a mount for a battery powered headlight. If you find an old Raleigh shop that was in business in the early '70s or before they might have one left over.
Nice bike and wonderful history on it, enjoy!

[EricEstlund]

Sounds like an excuse for a family road trip.

[texbike]

Fork crown is wrong for a Raleigh. There were any number of makers of British "roadsters" in that era...

Agreed! If it were a Raleigh, it would have a fork crown like the pic attached.

Regardless, it definitely looks British and what a great story.

About 10-12 years ago, I picked up a nice, clean Raleigh Sports that looked very similar to your bike at a garage sale. It had a 1955 date-coded SA hub on it (one of the ways used to date these bikes). It had an old sticker on it from a shop in Minnesota and a University of Texas bicycle license sticker from 1969. Cool bike. I rode it around town for a couple of years (it was my Christmas Ride bike) before passing it onto another forumite who had an interest in it. He played around with it for a year or two before one of our mutual friends saw it and recognized it as a bike that his family had purchased new. The bike had gone through a series of family members before they lost track of it. The bike had disappeared from their family ownership for over 30 years. The other forumite was kind enough to sell it back to them and reunite the bike with it's original family. Cool story!

Edit - Interestingly, the "other" forumite that I mentioned passing the bike to has already commented in this thread... ;)

Texbike

[Idris Icabod]

As a kid growing up in England my parents rented a house they owned right next door to a nurse who cycled every day, rain or shine but usually rain, to the local hospital on a very similar looking bike. She parked it in in my Dad's shed. I remember it was a Rudge, it weighed a tonne! Really cool project.

[azrider]

This is so rad!!

[ultraman6970]

Is really hard to know IMO because bikes like that are still being built, even you have chinese and dutch stuff still being built like that with cotter cranks and stuff.

Harder to know w/o having any engraving or decals on those bikes.

One thing tho, it is a super nice bike, looks like my grandad's hercules.