Raleigh 'town bike' sleeper

This is going to be a bit of a retrospective (with some shoddy old iPhone pics to start us off), but I wanted to share my daily ride. I started it last year and it has been on the road in various guises for a while but this latest round of work has properly finished it. It started out as a battle-worn Raleigh Quadra that somebody had already hastily converted to singlespeed:

It's a 531c frame and forks with nice clearances but also eyelets for mudguards - or, more importantly, a rack. I wanted to build something that looked a bit pedestrian but was still quite responsive to ride. That meant an old-school paint job and some way to carry a bag for work.

So frame stripped, I sent it to Armourtex for a Steel Blue powdercoat (and here come the crappy photos). While it was away I ordered a set of Raleigh Super Course decals from Cyclemondo - they date from around twenty years before the Quadra was made but had the desired effect. The great thing about powdercoating rather than enamel resprays is that you can apply the stickers yourself. Fun:

The newspapers rather give away how long ago this was to the eagle-eyed... Anyway, next I sourced a set of upright bars from an broken old Claude Butler we had laying around, polished them up and fitted them with a set of Alex rimmed flip-flop wheels:

And with a Brooks saddle, some bar tape and a Campag chainset it rode its way around London for about six months, until a rethink came along. I wasn't keen on putting the miles on the Campagnolo cranks so swapped for a near-NOS SR Royal chainset using a 118mm Shimano BB (now the pics get a bit better again). The chainset still needs more polish:

I then fitted a new wheelset with a two-speed Sturmey kickshift hub - a couple of gears but no unsightly cables. The SR is 52-tooth and the cog on the hub is 19 - that is the lower gear and the upper is about 38% higher I think. It works well, you just need to ride it a bit like you would a fixed bike to avoid accidental changes. I also chose a suitably old school pair of standard rims, too:

Then came a Wald rack from Tokyo fixed and a refit of that Brooks saddle - this time with a SR Laprade stem instead of a Campagnolo one (which I robbed for the CIOCC build):

Brakes are a bargain pair of period Campagnolo calipers which I accidentally won with a low bid on eBay (non-original nuts but I'm not fussed) and I then finished it off with a nice little Raleigh bell which uses the same 'R' logo as the decal set:

Headset is a new Tange item, pedals are MKS. Sadly the new iPhone let me down a bit for the final photo - it's a bit off-focus but I'll try for a new one this weekend. If the kitchen's clean enough. Anyway, you get the idea:

It's turned out to be a great commuter - that higher gear gives me half a chance of keeping up with geared bikes without struggling to pull away from the lights. And even with the rack, those 28c tyres and the hub it's still fairly light. As I said, the kickshift isn't perfect and requires a bit of patience, but once you get used to its limitations it's very effective. And it still looks like a singlespeed...

Great looking bike. It's kind of how mine should look if it wasn't a bit craply implemented.

Looks nice and tall as well.

Very impressive

This is very nice indeed. Well done Sir!

Very nice, looks the business!

That rack doesn't seem to be available in the UK, or anywhere! I want that plank.

Thanks all. Doppelkorn - Tokyo Fixed stock Wald and I'm pretty sure they are due a delivery imminently. Would be worth a try to give them a call.

That's bloody lovely. I had an S2C for a while and the operation was great for a town bike. I think it needs some slim silver mudguards to finish it off, no?

Would love to squeeze in some mudguards but there is no room for them under the chainstays bridge or fork crown with the 28c tyres, which the bike really needs for towpaths and carrying a bit of weight. I thought about chopping down a set of old metal guards (powdercoated to match with a little white section on the rear) and running them from the behind the calipers back, if you see what I mean, fastened at the rear of the fork crown up front and under the rack at the back. I already had to drill the rack and modify it to fit the shorter wheelbase so there's a hole there to use. Hmmm...

wow, great job!

I was wondering about guards but you can see from the pic of the front brake that there's no room there.

@rat-racer: When did you buy the rack? Was it pricy?

Yep. front brake is half the problem. Rear clearance is the other half - literally room for only a fag paper:

You can also (almost) see here how the rack was modified - the bracket wanted to position the rack way too far back (for a bike with lazier geometry) so instead I had to drill the wood and locate the support a fair way into the rack instead. That dangly bit (see primary school red arrow) is the bracket I should have used, bent downwards so it didn't look so, well, pointless. Hard to explain but hopefully you get the idea.

Anyway, rack came from Tokyo Fixed and was about £45 I think. I bought it a while ago and am suffering memory fade. Seems they don't list them on their website any more, but I was there last week asking about a non-wood one for another build and they are due stock.

I like it, it's sort of like mine but a lot cleaner, both in terms of actual cleanliness and neatness.

Looks great, well done!