At 9:38 AM -0500 1/22/09, marie autrey wrote:
>Anyway, what I'm asking is this: is it going to mess up that
>highly-vaunted SInger handling to substitute a longer seatpost on
>this bike? Is the shorter top tube going to leave me bunched up, or
>is this a classic randonneur geometry?
That Singer on e-bay is the second-ugliest Singer I have seen in my life. I doubt it was made in 1970 - the geometry looks more like 1980 to me, and so do the fork blades. The 1980s were a slow period, and they accepted almost any order. (In 1970, the shop was busy during the bike boom, and probably would not have built such an odd bike.)
For a few years in the early 1980s, Singer slackened the head tube angle for unknown reasons - Ernest Csuka claims not to remember doing so at all! - which made the bikes handle less well with front loads. So I doubt this bike has the "highly-vaunted" Singer handling, no matter the seat tube extension.
I think the bike has potential, but I'd want to remodel it a bit to make it more like a true Singer (move those shift levers!), rather than a reflection of the "interesting" tastes of the original owner.
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
140 Lakeside Ave #C
Seattle WA 98122
http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com