I know the bike is old but as it is also still in production so I thought it shouldn't be too hard finding a replacement set of forks. I am glad that the bike is still in production as if I'd gone down the old vintage Raleigh route that I'd pondered at the beginning then i would have been a bit concered trying to find replacement forks.
Finding replacement forks, even though Gazelle still make the bike is proving way harder than I imagined.
Firstly because it seems only the Gazelles really use a linkage anymore to connect to the front brake. No forks I've found have this fitting Secondly because I don't have a frame number that I can find anywhere on the bike. I sent a picture of the bike, plus the dimensioned image to Hollandbikeshop but they came back saying Gazelle had recommended a set of forks that had too short a steerer tube. I don't really trust that they looked at the dimensions or the spec that closely. I did question it but they responded saying that it was the best they could do without a frame number.
I tried phoning the Flying Dutchman bike shop in Camden but they didn't really want to know and were actually a bit rude on the phone. It would have been really helpful if I could have just popped in and got a frame number off the Gazelle they had in the shop but they are appointment only and didn't want to help over the phone.
Amazingly our neighbour has two Gazelle Tour Populairs too, but after some photo taking under the bottom bracket it doesn't seem that either of there bikes have obvious frame numbers either!
On Gazelle's website they list what was London Fields Cycles, now Velorution, as a stockist so I tried them. They didn't have any of the same bike in the shop but they were able to find the model on the service section of the gazelle website and try to order new forks.
I've also ordered these generic 28 x 1 1/2 replacement forks from Hollandbikeshop as they're cheap enough to mess up and after talking it through with various friends think that I should be able to drill and tap a strong enough fixing for the rod brake linkage. They also have the little silver capping over the crown of the forks too so will look correct. Lets see which set of forks turn up first...
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