Following Mercian’s 80th Anniversary Festival of Steel, we were delighted to welcome Eddie White and Cherie Pridham to our new factory.
Eddie White was a valued founding member of the Mercian-Bantel Team, riding with the team between 1968 and 1979. It was a particular pleasure to welcome Cherie, who took time out of her busy WorldTour schedule as Sports Director of UAE Team L’Imad to join Eddie for the visit.
1946 was a special year: Paul Smith was born in Nottingham, Mercian Cycles was founded in Derby. Paul was a very good cyclist in his youth and rode Mercian bikes - his fondness for Mercian has remained, and the feeling is mutual. To help celebrate our 80th anniversaries, Paul has designed two special limited edition bikes, which were launched at Selfridges in early September.
After many months of effort, and a tremendous grant to help us on our way from Erewash Council, we launched three new eBike models at the end of August.
A great crowd attended our Festival of Steel ride out in August, to help celebrate the 80th anniversary of Mercian. Many thanks to Belper Cycling Club, and Andre Toczek in particular, for helping organise the event and doing a great job on the 4 rides. And a big thankyou to all those who attended the event - we estimate approx 300 people turned up to help us mark the day, but give it a few months and the estimate will have grown to 3000!
Congratulations to Jill Scott for completing her epic 388 mile "Coming Home" challenge, raising almost £500k for Sport Relief! Mercian were proud to help.
We doff a very large cycling cap to Greg James, who finished his 8-day pan-UK challenge in Edinburgh on Friday raising over £4.5mln. What an incredible amount!
After six decades Mercian Cycles workshop has moved.
Through the years there were a number of locations in Derby for the shop, the frame building workshop and sprayshop. But since about 1965 the frame building and painting was taking place at the Pontefract Street workshop.
Framebuilder Tim took the chance to head out on the Ventura All-road bike to go and pick up some dropouts from Bear Frame Supplies. An ideal opportunity to capture some video of the custom steel Ventura out on the gravel trails of the Derbyshire Peak District.
This came through the post the other day and we are all really chuffed. We save as many stamps as we can and send them off to the R.S.P.B to help with there Albatross campaign.
A picture sent in by Chris from Ireland earlier in the week. He bought the 19.5 " frame for his wife Susan earlier this year while on holiday over here. A good find this 1984 second hand frame as its one of the early ones with the twin lateral top tubes which are no longer available. It is running
We are really busy in the spray shop at the moment with both renovation work and new frames. This shot is of a selection of forks in various degrees of finish which obviously tie up with the frames which are being worked on.
We have a second hand Mercian up for grabs. Its a Pro-lugless in Reynolds 653 tubing Its campag equipped with campag Shamal wheels. We can have it delivered in the UK if your interested. Please give the shop a call for further details.
Yet another customers picture this time from Manhattan. Below is his letter sent in with the picture
Hi there. This is a picture of my Mercian Superlight from the 80s.
This was meant to be my "winter bike" but its superior ride quality
(and my jealous friends) have convinced me that it is too
nic
Sorry for the delay with this blog update but I have just been a bit on the busy side anyway hopefully we are now back to normal . Below is a letter I recieved today which along with the picture I thought you would like .
Before it goes through to the spray shop we send most tandem frames up to the shop for checking we have the brazing in the correct position for such things as disc brake mounts and all the cable stops and guides etc.
Ok here it is a 631 Pro lugless built with Mercian top eyes. The details are as below
Size -- 56cm c-t
1" A-head fork column
Top tube -- 565mm
Angles -- 72deg head 72deg seat
Chainstay length -- 430mm
Bottom bracket drop -- 61mm
Rear end width -- 120mm
Mudguard eyes front and drilled a
We had a small batch of black polo shirts made ( my photo does not do the colour justice ) to check out the quality and we like them. So the order will go in soon for a boat load and will be available from the shop for under £30.00. We have used the Hanes beefy polo shirt to insure quality. A small
Going to post a picture soon of a cancelled order a Pro lugless track frame in 631 tubing with some chrome. It could be your chance to jump the queue and get a bargain because where going to knock off the deposit already paid !!!!. First come first serve . O and by the way its in undercoat so you ca
