Is it worthwhile repairing old components?

One of the fundamental problems in restoring old bikes is trying to source the period correct components to go on your frame. As the years slip by with ever increasing speed, the availability of the components you seek, seems to diminish. Occasionally, you may find the part you are looking for may turn up, but damaged. I have a frame belonging to a clubmate, that I know from over forty years ago. It lay rusting in the clubroom, having been used as a complete bike for riding rollers. Sweat had taken it’s toll on the paintwork, the frame had been stripped of all of it’s original components, but I had the frame refinished in original colour with original pattern transfers/decals reinstated. The restoration became moribund, because of the difficulty in trying to source period correct parts. It is my intention to build the bike up with parts sold by the late Ron Kitchin. The original owner was a big user of parts from ‘Everything Cycling’.

I had a large flange Normandy front hub from the 1950s/1960s, with the round holes in flanges, but I only had a damaged suitable rear hub. The flange was bent inwards from having the chain derail off the largest sprocket and wedging between the freewheel block and the flange. The flange was also heavily pitted from the incident. I have searched in vain for more than five years to find a better example without success. The one thing in favour of the damaged example, was the bearing cups in the hub are perfect. I asked a friend back in 2019 if he could repair the hub. The reply came back in the affirmative.

Now in fairness, it has taken a while, but my friend had just moved house and has been fully occupied renovating the property, back into a home for him and his family, in addition to all the other work, he has had on his plate. A recent visit, resulted in him showing me the tooling he had made to repair the hub. My friend explained that he had mulled over the problem of repair, analysing how best to tackle the repair, resulting in the best chance of success. Any way, I called with him a few weeks later and was presented with the repaired hub. The damaged right hand flange has been straightened, and the damage aluminium has been welded and ground back. Although some evidence of the repair is visible, it will not be visible, once the hub has been built into a wheel and a freewheel block fitted. Importantly the repair will not be visible from the usual viewing position at the back of the flange. One caveat. I don’t know how durable this repair would be for everyday, frequent use. However, for use on a vintage bike, probably doing no more than thirty miles on a vintage run, it should be more than adequate. The satisfaction is that this had made a damaged part useable once more, as well as a problem overcome in the journey to putting an old frame back on the road.