After riding a Brompton for last year or so and being bitten by the small wheel bug I just had to find a Moulton. Here is mine, bought on eBay from a man in Scotland for 57 pounds. He would only deliver to an address in the UK so for the moment it's living in my sisters garage in Brighton until I can get over there at the end of May to collect it.

The weekend of my sisters birthday was fantastic, everybody had a great time and I got to catch up with some of the family. Of course my secondary objective was to pickup the bike. I managed this using an enormous bag designed for transporting mountain bikes bought from Sydney Street Bikes in Brighton. The bike just fitted inside by removing the front wheel and mudguard and rotating the forks 180 degrees and then sliding the handle bar out of the stem clamp.

At Waterloo station I went for the "brazenly walking through" technique rather than trying to book the bag into the special cargo service. This worked a treat, of course the bag wouldn't fit through the x-ray machine so I was given the rubber glove treatment. The bag was thoroughly searched and the chap ran a kind of wand over the whole thing (including my hands). On the end of this wand was a gauze pad which he inserted into a machine, apparently it could detect the chemicals used in explosives (but not drugs he admitted, but then who would smuggle drugs out of the UK?). He said the sniffer dogs were off duty on bank holidays and this less reliable machine was used in their place.

On the train I went right up to the front carriage and tried to store the bag in the foremost vestibule (this technique is used by most regular commuters to Brussels as the exit there is ahead of the train). The train manager came along and said it was a safety hazard so I carried into the carriage and laid in on an empty table as the train was far from full.

A week after getting it home I began making some improvements and modifications. Initially I planned to upgrade most of the original chromed steel components for modern alloy equivalents. I was rather nervous about tapping the stem bolt down without knowing exactly what was on the other end, now I know that it's not connected to the suspension I gave it a tap and found the original stem to come out quite easily. I've replaced it with an alloy one with a longer forward reach and fitted drop bars, trying to create the Safari look and ride.

Before receiving the bike I was planning to rebuild the wheels with alloy rims but I found that the steel originals are in quite good shape, the front has some peeling chrome and when they are handled its possible to hear rust flakes moving around inside the rim but I won't be commuting every day on the bike. I also got yellow Brompton tires, I have Schwalbe Marathons on my Brompton and have not had a puncture for over a year now (that's the kiss of death!) but they are rather expensive and yellow Bromptons will be fine on the Moulton as a weekend bike.

I found a 26mm seat post in the third cycle shop I tried, it's a TransX and looks the part with a Brooks professional. My French is a little patchy but in a couple of the shops this size was referred to as "ancienne Anglais" which I take it is a dig at Raleigh!

I went for zip ties for securing the cables, not the best to look at but they do the job. The steel/chrome brake calipers were quite worn and beyond renovation. I found some double action alloy replacements in my LBS. The front is working fine but the scissor action of the brake arms causes some problems on the rear as the tops of the arms catch on the suspension block. I put an extra spacer on the bolt and this lets the arms clear the block but this means that the whole caliper is quite far from the frame and not braced at all well. The brake works but I will have to find another solution. Fortunately I don't have a deadline so I can tinker at will.

Next month (after payday!) I'll start investigating a new bottom bracket, crank and some SPD pedals.

One payday came and went but we had a week in Spain that month and all the funds were used up. This month it took a second trip around the bike shops to come to the conclusion that a single ring crank was very hard to find. Returning to the Brompton dealer in Brussels he suggested a Brompton crank. This seems to have worked very well, it looks sufficiently retro to suit the style of a period bike. The second challenge was to find a bottom bracket the right size.

The F Frame Moulton has a bottom bracket tube which is offset to the left. This means that any crank axle must be particularly long. The first two I bought were much too short, the third was just right at 122.5mm. The trouble with using a Shimano cassette bottom bracket is that it requires a special tool from Shimano to tighten the cups into the frame. So far I've been unable to find one apart from in a cyclists tool set in Makro but at 37 Euro it's just expensive to justify the purchase when I already have most of the other tools in the kit.

The yellow sticker is the logo of my local Brompton dealer who I always seem to end up buying all the parts from. (Mainly because they speak excellent English!)

I tried to fit the same style brake to the rear but found that the scissor action caught on the suspension. I did some inital experimentation with metal spacers and washers but although they allowed the ends of the scissor callipers to clear the suspension the calipers themselves were too far from the fork and were not well braced to take the load of braking. Finally I found that these normal alloy calipers fitted well and worked fine.

The last steel component to be replaced (apart from the wheel rims) was the seat clamp bolt. Even though I had thought about leaving the wheels as they are with the standard rims I hope to purchase new alloy rims and stainless steel spokes from Moulton Preservation in London next month. This will be my first attempt at wheel building.

After asking for wheel advice on the Moulton mailing list I decided to go for a new front hub and Brompton rims made by Rigida of Holland from Velodroom. Online sources may be quicker and more convenient but there's no substitute for talking with a real person. There is an excellent tutorial on wheel building on cycling guru Sheldon Browns website. I plan to build the front wheel using this method. For the rear wheel I found some excellent advice on the Brompton FAQ, "Channell M. Wasson, Feb 1999: Easy way to install new rim is to tape new rim to old and move spokes over one at a time. Of course new spokes (quite inexpensive) are best in this one at a time method. Suddenly a new wheel appears--it's like a snake shedding its skin to start a new life.". Channell is the US distributor for Bromptons. I will try this technique for the rear wheel where I will be using the original Sturmey Archer 3 speed hub.

30/11/2003 - After lots of faffing about and moving apartments I finally got around to rebuilding the wheels. I did buy a Brompton rim for the front after all but decided to try and get hold of a Sturmey Archer Dynohub. I got one from a chap in the UK via the Moulton group on Yahoo. For eight pounds plus shipping he sent it over. It's a 28 hole hub with a very high flange on one side where the dynamo is, this one is in excellent condition and is stamped "68" which shows it's age. A kind member of the Moulton Yahoo group sent me a lengthy how-to on building this wheel. It involved buying two different sets of spokes. I got the spoke threading totally wrong on the first attempt, 3 cross instead of 2. After five more attempts I got it right. Wheel building is quite a spiritual activity, somehow akin to pottery or sculpture as it's a great feeling to have something so dynamic take shape in your own hands. Buoyed by the success of the front wheel building I started on the back wheel. I wanted to keep the original Strumey 3 speed hub. Unfortunately a Brompton rim was not suitable here as the hub has 36 holes. I had to order a rim made by Sun in the US which turned out to be rather expensive. With the hard won experience from the front wheel I managed to build the rear wheel in about 45 minutes (as opposed to 3 to 4 hours for the front). It quickly became very solid and required little in the way of truing. A good job as I don't have a truing jig!

Here's the DynoHub wired up to a front light found in Carrefour. Unfortunately most of the lights to be found in shops are designed to be used with bottle dynamos where the frame of the bike acts as ground/return. The DynoHub really requires two wires but grounding one terminal to the forks seems to work just as well.

Close up of the DynoHub showing ground to the fork.

Rear wheel built with Sun 36 hole alloy rim and the original Sturmey Archer three speed hub. 148mm stainless steel spokes from SJS Cycles.

The finished item. The narrow black Brooks professional saddle shown above has been moved onto the racer I recently found in the flea market (web page to come). The well worn Brooks B17 from the Brompton is now fitted. The front carrier comes from a great guy in the UK who is making them to order. It's sprayed with black Smoothrite for a tough finish. Still to add is an LED light on the back.