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Thank God you restored it back to its proper form after the fixed period!
Looks great, and making me want to finish my touring build and get out riding places like that..Gona need me some silver mudguards and a brooks, but how aare you finding the tape? Would be handy to get some brooks tape to match the seat but does it feel comfortable?
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I wont lie, that tape is fucking hard. However you do get used to it and it does soften with time. As long as you have a comfortable bar position its fine. A minor issue with it at the moment is that it ripped at a seem half way along the right hand strip, i'm going to have to glue it back together to get it back on again.
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I've not noticed any problem, I usually make sure that they're good and hard before I set off though. That being said the Marathons' do have exceptionally hard side walls; which is one the issues I will be addressing in the upgrades.
Which leads me neatly to my next list:
Problems I've found
- The bars aren't compact enough.
- The transition between the levers and bars isn't flat enough so hurts my wrist.
- Levers are still a bit narrow my my taste.
- With my hands on the tops of the levers I'm over stretched.
- Seatpost is cheap crap.
- Mudguards are a bit flimsy and the mounts are poor.
- Tyres, which very tough, give quite a hard ride thanks to the inflexible sidewalls.
- Its quite a long reach down to the gear shifters.
- Brakes are fine until you've got a heavy load, then they become much to flexy.
- The rack needs some kind of light mount to use with full bags.
- The bars aren't compact enough.
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That bikes lovely, looks just as you say one you can jump on and ride, no matter where or how far. Lovely.
What did you do with the drailier/shifter/rear spacing going from freewheel to cassette and gaining a cog?
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^Just make sure it has front and rear rack mounts, +/- cantilever brake mounts to give enough clearance for mudguards.
The front rack mount is halfway down the fork here, and then one of the little eyelets by the fork dropout. the other eyelet would be for the mudguard.
The rear rack mount is on the seatstay between the rear brake bridge and the canti brake cable guide, as well as again one of the little eyelets by the rear droupout, the otehr being for the rear mudguard.
sorry if you already knew this!
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Really like that bike. Great thread!
cheers
Some randonneur bars?
The squiggly bend bars ruin it IMHO....You will see my solution in my next post below
That bikes lovely, looks just as you say one you can jump on and ride, no matter where or how far. Lovely.
What did you do with the drailier/shifter/rear spacing going from freewheel to cassette and gaining a cog?
I took it to an excellent bike shop in Carmarthen called hobbs cycles, he re-spaced it to 135mm. Really took his time to make sure it was right, cost me under a tenner and said if I could ride the bike he build with opposite steering for more than 5m I could have the work done for free. I could not do it, but i was happy to pay.
what a lovely looking bike, really makes me want to build a nice classic tourer style bike, just wouldn't know where to start in regards to choosing a frame.
keep up the good work!
^Just make sure it has front and rear rack mounts, +/- cantilever brake mounts to give enough clearance for mudguards.
This is true, but you can get away with mudguard mounts and dual piviots if you're on a budget/not going to be carrying a huge amount of stuff.
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Cool thread and bike. I'm sprucing my track bike up and will do a similar thread.
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lovely bike, thought it looked good with the black seatpost and wheels too.. what are the mudguards, stainless?
Thy're Alu ones, however they're getting replaced.
Cool thread and bike. I'm sprucing my track bike up and will do a similar thread.
i look forward to seeing it. I found it quite pleasurable to document all the little changes and history.
Anyway he's my solutions to the problems so far.
[*]The bars aren't compact enough.
This is an easy fix I've got some Bontrager SSR VR-C bars;
As seen on my other bikes; Jose & the Leader. They're really good bars, as you can tell because I've put them on three of my bikes.
*[]The transition between the levers and bars isn't flat enough so hurts my wrist.
- Levers are still a bit narrow my my taste.**
I've tried to get a smooth transition like with my other bikes but the Tektro levers just aren't the right shape. This means new levers, So i'm looking at SRAM S500s':
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0037/3982/products/SRAM_S500_BRL_large.jpg?102053
or Cane Creek SCR-5 levers:
http://www.pinkyeti.net/bikes/colnago_master_pista/images/cane_c1.jpg
The SRAM one don't seem to be in stock anywhere with the silver lever, so I might give the SCR5s' a punt, they're also about £15-20 cheaper.
[*]With my hands on the tops of the levers I'm over stretched.
I've dug out a shorter stem and given it a re-polish so this should be fine.
[*]Seatpost is cheap crap.
Doctor P. did me an excellent deal on a Nitto S83
http://thumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp/@0_mall/sidecar/cabinet/product/57395_s83_01.jpg
should be perfect/
[*]Mudguards are a bit flimsy and the mounts are poor.
Gone for the best, Gilles Berthoud Stainless Steel Mudguards.
[*]Tyres, which very tough, give quite a hard ride thanks to the inflexible sidewalls.
I've got some 32c Panaracer Pasela Tour Guards' in 32c. Hopefully they will give a better ride as they're more flexible, also the gumwalls will look good.
[*]Its quite a long reach down to the gear shifters.
The answer to this problem is suntour stem mounted shifters:
http://hilarystone.com/images/sale%20images/Other%20gears/Suntour-stem-shifters.jpg
However I didn't like the lever's action, I've grown used to having the ratchet on the Powershifters. So, thanks to some fiddling and extra washers to get the ratchet to engage I've got the two working together (i'll take a photo later)
[*]Brakes are fine until you've got a heavy load, then they become much to flexy.
I've got some Tektro R538 brakes to go on.
http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/images/products/medium/23901S.jpg
They tick all the boxes; Deep drop, long movement quick realise, cartridge pads, not made of cheese.
I've also drilled out the bridge and crown to accept the 8mm recessed bolt.[*]The rack needs some kind of light mount to use with full bags.
Not 100% on what to do with this yet, there nothing wrong with my current rack so i'll probably make some kind of adaptor.
- Levers are still a bit narrow my my taste.**
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http://www.sigmasport.co.uk/p/22500/s500-alloy-brake-lever-set/?utm_source=googlebase&utm_medium=pricecomp&utm_campaign=GoogleShopping
Levers seem to be in stock here.
Think I'm going order some.
Vesalius
sdw
stedlocks
raleighracer
MrBaklava
Velorbi
StandardPractice
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About
Raleigh Royal Audax / Randonneur
Posted by
@spotter
I’m currently upgrading my Raleigh royal, so I thought I’d give a little history it and some of its life with me so far. It is my favourite bike out of my small stable, so please excuse me if I ramble a bit. I’m using this thread to keep a little history of the bike for my own records really rather than running updates.
As far as I’m aware there were few versions of this frame made the ’84 model, which mine is, and the ’87 version. Which doesn’t have the scalloped seatstays, but have rather nicer flat ones with ‘Raleigh’ pantographed in gold on. I think I’ve also seen a version with canti-mounts too. If anyone can find it in an original catalogue I’d be very grateful.
I bought the whole bike from a couple who did house clearances. Underneath a good layer of filth it was almost all original, apart from someone had replaces the drops for risers and tatty V-brake levers.
I haven’t got any photos of how I got it, however I did find some photos from an eBay sale of one (which happened to be the same size and age) in pretty much condition, which I’ve pinched to give a nice bench mark.
The main components of the original build are:
Sadly I didn’t have the money to give it a new lease of life straight away so it stripped it right down and for a few months I ran it as a rather awful looking fixed gear, knock about bike.
Not the best look I think you’ll agree but it gives you a good view of the geometry without the clutter or components. When the wet weather started to kick in I got round to building it properly.
I’d like to think this was a bit of a step up in the world for the Royal, in total it had:
Once I’d finished it I knew she’d be a keeper; fast, comfortable, sturdy and handsome it was everything I wanted. It turned out that the derailleur had been stretched/weakened somehow, so for quite a while I couldn’t use the full range of the cassette as it wouldn’t return properly. Luckily some rummaging in my parts bin found an identical one that worked perfectly.
I soon realised I needed a rack so I bought a cheap one, some second hand panniers from a friend, a rather fetching brooks mud flap and some proper pedals (Time ATACs’):
(Sorry about the crap phone photo)
I rode it 10 miles a day on my commute to my then job, no matter the weather and loved every minute of it.
The next round of upgrades came the following summer with new wheels, brake levers and finally a silver seatpost.
The wheels are Raleigh Pro Builds’, Sora hubs laced to Mavic Open Sports’ with stainless spokes. The old wheels were always a stop gap as they were all I could afford at the time; I never thought they fitted very anyway. (They eventually got shifted onto my Falcon Townie and eventually sold.) I found the Shimano levers to be very thin and rather uncomfortable so they replaced with Tektro RL340s’.
I pretty much left it as it was then for the rest of the year, apart from the addition of some nicer new luggage, and a leather chain stay guard:
It did many miles that year including my first London to Brighton ride (seen here half way):
It’s a versatile bike too:
No matter how crap I feel I’m in or how foul the weather I can’t help but smile when I ride it.
I think I'll leave it there for the moment; Its had a very hard winter so spring means a fresh’ish start. I'll talk about the various little niggles & issues and the upgrades I’ll be making to address them in my next post.
To be continued…