I'm intrigued by the part where you (@bananaseat) talk about this Montreal Favorit bicycle distributor near Highway 40 as a possible Russian espionage front from the Cold War era. I found a link between Montreal and Chekoslovak spies on a CIA archive site. This is an interesting article which demonstrates to what extent the city was a place of choice to avoid the gaze of the Americans without compromising the espionage work. Was the store on Cavendish Boulevard really a base of the USSR government? I will not be able to confirm this information easily I believe. But is a very interesting hypothesis. Here is the CIA article I'm talking about: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp90-00965r000604920015-8
Rapido Retro Bike (Help Please)
- Thread starter Kinetic-UK
- Start date
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Hello Louis007 -
Welcome to the forum and thank you for sharing your example.
It was produced at a plant in Rokycany, Czechoslovakia, or Czech Republic depending upon date.
The plant manufactures cycles under at least six or eight marques.
The Rapido and Jawa marques tend to be used for practical adult transportation cycles with one-speed, three-speed planetary or five-speed derailleur drive trains.
The Pioneer marque is commonly employed for juvenile models.
The Favorit and Velamos marques are employed for sports models.
There is also the ESKA marque.
Cycle serial numbers with an open date marking are typically placed on the underside of the bottom bracket shell as on this ESKA of 1978 -
here is the head emblem of the same machine -
here is the cycle in a partially disassembled state -
Motokov Praha was what we would term in the west and export group which handled a number of Czech manufactures
in addition to bicycles, mopeds, motorcycles & tyres they also handled chain hoists and sidecars among their products
if you are able to post photos or your bicycle readers should be able to give more and better information regarding it
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Hello Louis007 -
Welcome to the forum and thank you for sharing your example.
It was produced at a plant in Rokycany, Czechoslovakia, or Czech Republic depending upon date.
The plant manufactures cycles under at least six or eight marques.
The Rapido and Jawa marques tend to be used for practical adult transportation cycles with one-speed, three-speed planetary or five-speed derailleur drive trains.
The Pioneer marque is commonly employed for juvenile models.
The Favorit and Velamos marques are employed for sports models.
There is also the ESKA marque.
Cycle serial numbers with an open date marking are typically placed on the underside of the bottom bracket shell as on this ESKA of 1978 -
here is the head emblem of the same machine -
here is the cycle in a partially disassembled state -
Motokov Praha was what we would term in the west and export group which handled a number of Czech manufactures
in addition to bicycles, mopeds, motorcycles & tyres they also handled chain hoists and sidecars among their products
if you are able to post photos or your bicycle readers should be able to give more and better information regarding it
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oops -
forgot to mention above that headsets and bottom brackets on these machines are always BSC
tube diameters are BSC as well
here is a Favorit F12 road model of 1979 -
the cycle's pump pegs exhibit an interesting wrinkle in that they serve as housing stops for the rear brake transmission as well
here are a few images of a Favorit road cycle of 1973 -
above machine one model down from the top
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oops -
forgot to mention above that headsets and bottom brackets on these machines are always BSC
tube diameters are BSC as well
here is a Favorit F12 road model of 1979 -
the cycle's pump pegs exhibit an interesting wrinkle in that they serve as housing stops for the rear brake transmission as well
here are a few images of a Favorit road cycle of 1973 -
above machine one model down from the top
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