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@dooks
Just about finished the raleigh beater/commuter last night. sorry about the crap phone pic. it was late and the light wasn't great.... and i'd drunk at least a couple of those bottles in the background there.
it's an old Raleigh frame. Not sure of the tubing. It's not 531, maybe 501. It’s not mega light but will be plenty tough i'm sure. Built it up with miche hubs, mavic open pros, new shimano b/b and stronglight headset. I recycled the campag cranks, gebhardt chainring off my old path racer, have a sweet suntour superbe chainring to go on when I get a new cog. Also reused the long reach (too long!) calipers, mudguards (gilles berthoud) and saddle off another bike.
Other new bits are the the Raleigh bars, 3ttt stem, and new tektro brake levers. Did the grips with recycled brooks leather tape from an old bike. Going to fit flats and clips at some point so I can ride to work/the pub in normal shoes.
The chrome mudguards where a huge pain the ar5e to re-fit. You have to cut and drill them to fit and because this bike is a different size and shape from the old one I had to re-fettle them all over the place. There’s much less clearance to fit them on this frame anyway because it’s build for 700c rather than 27”s. As a result of that and fat-ish 28mm tyres I had to do all sorts of things like saw off bolts and drill, cut and file out brackets. They still rubbed pretty badly so i had to do a fair bit of indelicate levering and bending to get them off the tyres.
Last downside is an insane amount of clattering from the mudguard on the frame round the bottom bracket. Have managed to rig something up with leather bartape on the seat tube and foam pads from inside a helmet on the chainstays but it looks ugly so i'm going to have to find another way of keeping it still and quiet. ]
Maiden voyage this morning was pleasant enough. Need to change seat posts as that one tends to pitch the seat down at the nose which isn't too comfortable for me. Other than that though it performed wonderfully.
Now i just need an old fashioned bell.
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