FINDING THE SEKINE SHT 270

Though I would love to take credit for finding this well preserved 1975 Sekine SHT 270 myself, I simply can't.  A fellow bicycle recycler found this beautiful old Canadian made road bicycle at the "Dump" and gave it to me.  That same fellow and I now exchange bicycles regularly.  I feed him mountain bikes, and the like, while he passes on all the old road bikes to me.  He was the person who dropped off a gorgeous 1971 Carlton Professional at my house one day when I was at work.  I might add that as you look for vintage road bicycles, chances are you will run into people like my friend and me.  Ours is not an uncommon passion and we can be great resource opportunities.

Don, the fellow who gave me the Sekine, had been salvaging discarded bicycles from the local "Dump" for years.  He would fix them up and sell them locally each Summer.  It was at his roadside used bicycle showroom, for lack of a better description, that Don and I first hooked up.

Very early in our relationship, and at his invitation, I went to visit my fellow bicycle-recycler.  He, and his wife, lived several miles up the Onion Lake Road, just north of Thunder Bay, the city in which I live.  Don works hard finding and fixing just about any kind of bicycle that he can.  He repairs bicycles that he feels, still have value and then sells them locally to anyone seeking basic and inexpensive transportation.  To my good fortune, he is not the least bit interested in attempting to sell old "Ten Speeds".  Anyway, back to my first visit to Don's place.

Don and his wife at the time, lived in a small tightly knit little community, about ten miles north of Thunder Bay.  The house is a modest affair and their fenced-in yard is, quite literally, filled with row upon row of bicycles.  After quickly casting an eye over hundreds of bicycles (probably 200-300 in total and mostly mountain bicycles), I managed to mentally catalog about five bikes of interest.  One of the five, of course, was the Sekine "SHT 270".  The first really nice vintage road bicycle ever to come my way.

Don had sorted his bicycle inventory in a manner that made sense to me.  Mountain bikes in one area.  Roadsters and really old bicycles in another.  And finally, lined up in a single row and leaning one against the other, "Ten Speeds".  The Sekine was the last of the bicycles in the row, trapped between the others and the chain link fence.  About twenty other "Ten Speeds" were leaning against the Sekine, all targeted to return to the Dump once a trailer load had been put together.  After sorting through the row of vintage road bikes, and making mental notes about which ones I would try to acquire, I finally came to the last one - the SHT and was I pleased.

There it sat, Brooks leather saddle, Campagnolo Nouvo Record transmission and drive, and other eye appealing features.  Everything I could see added up to a nice bicycle.  In fact, the Sekine looked to be a really great bicycle.  At this point in time, the only other bicycle I had found with Campy anything, was a Holdsworth Equipe, and the Campagnolo components on it were entry level Valentino.  To add frosting on a Velo cake, the SHT would be the first bicycle acquired with a leather saddle.  Needless to say, I was pretty excited about the find.

I asked Don about the bicycle.  Having absolutely no interest in the older road bikes, he said that I could have it.  The other few bicycles that I had expressed interest in were mine as well.  In fact, the entire row was mine for the taking.  We agreed that from that point on, I would supply Don with any mountain bicycles that I came upon.  Don would reciprocate, by providing me with any old "Ten Speeds" that came his way.

This symbiotic relationship functions pretty well.  At first the benefit was in my favour, since Don was finding quite a few old road bikes.  Today, and sadly for me, things have changed.  Don gets very few old road bicycles these days.  I speculate as to why, but the point is he very rarely gets an old road bike.  On the other hand, I have refined my search techniques and I find lots of mountain bicycles, some for the price of "get it out of my way and thanks for doing so."  Those same bike hunting techniques also help me find between sixty and a hundred collectable vintage road bicycle, each year.

I took the Sekine and half a dozen other old road bikes home that day, but focused my attention on the SHT.  I gave it a quick going over and then out for a brief spin.  That was the beginning of an "I like it a lot affair".  The Sekine was built up using a set of wheels that I had built for Big Green, the result of a disastrous, first effort, at building a vintage road bicycle.  The Campagnolo transmission remained and I rode the bicycle for a summer.  Then, for some reason (probably because I had bikes pouring through the door that year), I hung the SHT 270 up and forgot about it for quite some time.

A year, or two, passed and my interest in the SHT surfaced again, though I cannot recall why.  This time, I went completely through the bicycle and upgraded it to a full Shimano 600 Arabesque grouppo.  The Arabesque components are absolutely beautiful and work flawlessly!  They are fast becoming a very collectable group.

NEXT - BUILDING THE SEKINE SHT 270