One of our popular ‘vintage’ frames has made a come back this year. The Superlight frame was introduced in the early 1960’s with any excess metal cut away from the lugs to remove weight.

The C1960 Mercian catalogue reads – For Time Trials with bell, brake and silk 1’s, 17 lb. 9 ozs. A prophecy – this will be the first machine “inside 55 minutes” 🙂

The frame was discontinued in the late 1990’s but it became a popular model for the Mercian collector or connoisseur, with people searching for them on auction sites or cycle jumbles.

We stopped making them as we were getting old Superlights back to the Workshop for repair and restoration but we were having difficulty replacing tubes. The original lugs were made and cut before the availability of cast steel lugs that we use today, and the cut-away pressed steel lugs were not strong enough to withstand a tube replacement. But, Neil, one of our frame builders decided to cut the stronger currently used cast lug with the Superlight design and a little of his own style. The result is as you can see here.

We have tested the repairability of this new updated Superlight and it has passed with flying colours.

The Superlight shown here is built in 853 Pro Team tubing, finished in Ruby Flamboyant, with Gold Polychromatic contrasts and Gold Lug lining, the transfers are the newly copied 3D early Gothic Mercian transfers with 1950’s Head and Seat Crests.

With frame, forks and headset – the frame shown weighs 2.4kg.

See our History section (under About Us) for the C1960 brochure when the Superlight was introduced – link below.

https://www.merciancycles.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Mercian-Brochure-c1960.pdf

Unfortunately we’re not able to match the c1960 prices. For current pricing information see the Superlight page under ‘Frames’

https://www.merciancycles.co.uk/frames/superlight/