Yours is a noble effort, but doomed to limited success because you have to factor in the efforts of Berliner, the importer, who would supply them anyway you wanted. He told me he had shelves full of extra bodywork and parts so he could swap out colors and stuff to give the buyer or shop what they wanted.
Also, owners over the years swapped stuff to their liking. My daily driver 73 Eldo has V700-style sidecovers, a T rear wheel, and a 74 disc front end. (I did all that swapping.)
As for sidecovers and stuff, you can't be sure after the A-series Ambassadors only (V700 covers, tank, knob on toolbox). After that, you see some with dual instruments, knobs or locks on the toolbox, V700 or louvered covers. About 1971, the configuration stabilized on the locks, instruments, and sidecovers, but then there's still the owner/Berliner factors.
GF
On Saturday, June 21, 2003, at 03:46 AM, Ian Adkins wrote:
Jason,
Hard to know how the company set up the runs. One would think that when they started using a component they would stick with it. However back in the old days they could have still been using up left over stuff intermittently as it came in.
Sounds like my bike would have been the early Eldo with 4 shoe (and Del Ortos) and yours would have been at the end of the production run. Tihs is part of the reason why I am interested in documenting the numbers. You can tell a lot based on the serial number and the components on the bike.
Hope all is well...Ian
-----Original Message----- From: jason telford [mailto:jr-@avalon.net] Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 10:44 AM To: Loopfram-@topica.com Subject: RE: 4 leading shoe brakes?
Hi Ian,
61096, manufacture date '73 sept. 4LS, Amals (changed to Del Orto's) She's for sale....and I'll toss in the Amal's to boot (yecch).
Does this mean there's about 4500 of these running around? Sounds like a lot.
Cheers, jason
Jesse Open wrote:
As I recall ,my 1974 4LS Amal Eldo was 56927. It is the one
Sport Cycles
had in their web site. jason telford wrote:
I've got one (see my next post, though).
I can get you numbers if I haven't already sent them in.
Cheers, Jason
Ian Adkins wrote:
Hi All,
With all this rainy weather here in North GA I have been
cleaning up the
Loop List. As I was doing this I started thinking about my
4 leading
shoe Eldo. She has serial number VP56933. Anyone else have an
Eldo with a 4
leading shoe? What are the numbers?
The next bike on my list is 57639 and the previous one is
56547 so there
are a lot of bikes in between there that are yet to be accounted for.