"Q." LostVideos-AT-hotmail.com wrote in message ...
"Marian Rosenberg" wrote
snip
Front rim has the words "Made in England" badly stamped into the
metal. It actually reads "5 x 13/8 Dunlop 26 x 13/[spoke] EA3 MADE IN
E#GLA##" Judging by rust speckles I assume the rims are chromed
steel.

Not that it matters with this bike the way it might have mattered with
the mysterious Japanese bike but the front and rear wheel reflectors
are Cat Eye. The reflectors attached to the brakes are SATE-LITE.

Moving on to the pedals I see "Made in England" followed by "PhillipS"
and what appears to be a serial number - Ao No 848363.

The pedals also have Patent Number 634981.

The kickstand is an impressive number that looks like it could even
take on deep mud and win. It is "Shuresta."

Front hub has "Phillips, Made in England" underneath a layer of grime.
I remembered to look at the front hub because the rear hub is "Sturmey
Archer," "England," "AW," "53," "3," and "Three Speed."

Does it look a bit like this:
http://www.yellowjersey.org/champ.html

Yes. It is a little hard to tell since the chain guard on that
picture is hiding most of the fancy metal work.

If I understand it right, the hub was made in 1953.

Cool.

If you do a google search for Phillips Bicycle a lot of stuff will come up.

Don't know a whole lot about these bikes, but I'm sure some others will
chime in.

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So, what do I have? And did I do a good job by breaking the rules and
snarfing these from the dump?

Isn't thee a joke about that ... if you go to the dump, and come back with
stuff, you just might be a redneck (c:

Quite possibly so...

He's even got a dead car in front of his house. It happens to be a
vintage porsche but it _is_ (at least currently) a dead car.

Sounds like you did all right to me. They just destroy these bikes for
scrap?!? It's a shame, there are many organizations which would recycle
these bikes back to people who could use them, those old steel framed,
fendered 3 speed bikes are excellent commuter bikes.

Well I'm not quite sure what they do with these bikes. At some point
in the past my boyfriend brought stuff that counted as scrap metal and
there were bicycles in the scrap metal pile. This time round they
were very obviously sorted out and had their own drop off point.
There was also some semblance of order to the stacking.

-M