Help with history of "no-name" bike: Chimo Cobra, HKB

[yodelmoaner]

Hi,

I found a bike at a thrift store and know nothing about its origins.
There is a sticker on the seat tube that has the name and number of
the store that sold it twenty or so years ago, but the person on the
other end of the phone was a man of few words and little help.

If anyone can help me learn where, when, and by whom this bike was
made, I'd be most appreciative. Any other insight would be great too.

The essentials:
The frame says "CHIMO" vertically on each side of the seat tube,
"COBRA" on the top tube, and it has a red, gold and blue sticker on
the front of the head tube that reads vertically "HKB" or "HK8". Web
searches for all of these names have been fruitless.

The details:
The frame is lugged, the fork crowned, the horizontal rear dropouts
are Suntour GT. It looks to be a good candidate for a fixed gear
conversion because it has no cable stop or shifter braze-ons. There
are eyelets for mudguards and/or racks. The topper is the sticker on
the seat tube that says "Chrome Molybdenum D-B Tubeing (sic?)". The
serial number is JU103423.

It has Dia Compe brake levers and Dia Compe G side pull calipers, with
SR drop bars and stem. These pieces are dated between Dec 79 and Feb
80. The SR seat post is the older C-clamp type. The bike has a
Suntour VX rear derailer, Suntour Power downtube shift levers, and a
Shimano front derailer which was made in Singapore. It has Suzue hubs
with 27x1 1/4 Araya rims (presta) and a Suntour Pro Compe freewheel.

It's quite light by my standards and feels like a great size for me
(22.5" seat and top tubes, c-c), so I paid the $20 price the thrift
store had put on it.

Thanks for reading this far. Any insight appreciated.

Cheers,

Steve

I will be checking this list, but if you wish to respond via e-mail
"snip" the e-mail address appropriately.

[jonatan...@gmail.com]

Hi! Curious, what where the dimensions of the seat post?

Having one of these chimos myself but without seat post unfortunately.

[John B. Slocomb]

On Mon, 22 Dec 2014 04:46:41 -0800 (PST), jonatan...@gmail.com
wrote:

>Hi! Curious, what where the dimensions of the seat post?
>
>Having one of these chimos myself but without seat post unfortunately.

I never owned owned but it is likely a 27.2mm seat post.
--
Cheers,

John B.

[Andrew Chaplin]

jonatan...@gmail.com wrote in news:eb0a987c-f13c-41ba-8c2e-05e33efce338
@googlegroups.com:

> Hi! Curious, what where the dimensions of the seat post?
>
> Having one of these chimos myself but without seat post unfortunately.

"Chimo!" is supposedly an Inuktitut equivalent of "Cheers!" The bicycle may
have been sold through a Canadian bicycle parts distributor, Norco. Norco
post sizes known to the encyclopaedic Sheldon Brown are listed here:
<http://sheldonbrown.com/seatpost-sizes.html>. They're a atarting point. I
would take measurements with a pair of inside calipers and a micrometer and
mean three dimensions taken at 90 and 30 degrees from the axis of the top
tube (which will give you a hexagon in the bore) and see what I get.
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)