Kaaaaaaandries' pursuit for the ultimate vintage roadie!

@Matisse Fair, I thought they looked similar but the RX100 seems to always be polished. Yeah I did receive a response re the Dawes and fingers crossed I'll hear something back within the next few months. All depends on the new owner's living arrangements (from Italy)..

So the second favourite of the bunch was this beaut:

It was summer 2013 and my first ever try at indexed shifting. I remember being really impressed with how the frame felt but I always put this down to me comparing it against my Alu Langster, which is a completely different bike altogether. At that point I decided that I prefer steel to anything else, although yet to try crabon. This bike was fully Shimano Exage equipped with a Bipoace chainring, full mudguards and my favourite ever saddle the B17 - it even had a analog trip computer mounted on the front wheel axel.

Now the reason I write this is because I was round one of my fixie friends house the other night and got speaking to his dad about this project. He then told me he had this beaten Raleigh bike in his shed and that I was free to help myself to!

I didn't think much of it first but then look what I came across:

Now forgive my shoddy and hasty iPhone snaps but can you imagine my excitement when I saw it?

That didn't last long however as the dreaded size gods were against me once again and I declined my fixie friend's fathers offer! I did take it on a 10 mile jaunt though and it reminded me how damn smooth this thing operates... Such a nice light, nimble feel to it and those Exage Sport brakes hmmm!

This allowed me to narrow things down quite alot! Specs must be;

1. Raleigh Corsa in colourway above OR similar Reynolds 531 (no higher, no lower) with fairly tight geo like the above - in 54cm obv
   
2. Able to take mudguards
   
3. Nice thin rims with 23c tyres - forgive my lack of technical jargon here! Those weinnman wheels on the first Corsa were nice on what seemed to be expensive tyres - fixie bike friends dad's one was running vittoria something something!
   
4. Shimano 105 OR Exage Sport now also considered - just to recap, I will at some point try modern sram stuff but baby steps pls
   
   

When I'm ready, I think I'll look at purchasing frames individually as opposed to whole bikes. Might have more option that way as I'm more likely to find the bits I want readily compared to a whole bike.

The look I'm going for is exactly the first Corsa above or something like this... Nice and simple;

Although I'm aware these are prolly pre 80's judging by the group and the way the brake cables are mounted.

When anything changes I'll let you know, however heading into another busy period at work so this'll have to go on the backburner from March.

Kyle