sjanzeir

Those old tubes have been holding air for about 12 hours!




I pumped them up to 60R/55F early after midnight, and they're still nice and firm as of this afternoon.

Armed with a bottle of 3-in-one oil, I gave the bike a good once-over, lubing the rusty old chain, every pivot point including the brake levers and shifters, and even the exposed ball bearings of the old pedals.

Everything works smoothly and as it should; both derailleurs move the now-smooth chain across every sprocket/chainring with little hesitation and with reasonable force applied to the shifters (which were almost seized); and the brakes grab the wsy out of true rims with authority and normal resistance at the levers.

To my pleasant surprise, the aluminum seatpost wasn't fused to the steel seat tube! It took some effort forcing it out, what with the overtightened steel being locked into shape over the past 20 years or so, but I was able to wiggle it out after forcing the welded clamp apart with a screwdriver and a resin hammer and a few drops of 3-in-one. Putting it back in took some force, but it's secure now.

Having done the what from here on out I'll call the Arab tuneup, I going to see if I can work up the courage to take it out around the neighborhood this evening. This lady seems to still have quite some life left in her yet!



Does she look ready? She looks ready!

ramzilla

Please don't go down any long hills or try to exceed about 15mph until you replace those tires. Blowouts of the front tire are especially dangerous at speed. Be good. Have fun.

sjanzeir

I got around to taking the Raleigh on its maiden ride yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon and it was terrifying.

The old steel Raleigh rims were so out of true it would've been hilarious if it wasn't so disconcerting. I had opened up the calipers to make room for the rims' wobble way back in the 1990s; the levers were just about touching the handlebars before there was any meaningful braking to be had. The dents in the rim made me look (and feel) ridiculous with my head bobbing like a chicken every time I tried to slow down.

And then there were the narrow handlebars. I'm just not used to having this little control over what the fork and front tire are doing. And being older and fatter than I used to be around 1997-ish, the bars were so narrow my upper arms tucked in on my man-tits... Let's just say it wasn't pleasant. It was surprisingly easy to keep the bike in a straight line, though; it tracked well and had a good amount of caster for self-centering. I still wouldn't go hands off the bars for any stretch, though.

And I had quite the (re/un)learning curve on my hands. I had to relearn how (and how far) I needed to reach down to the shifters. I had to relearn how to keep the bike in control with my other hand while I was doing it. I had to relearn how to get the chain where I wanted it while keeping it from jumping chainrings. I had to unlearn how to be dependent on the convenience of indexed shifting and relearn how to align the rear derailleur to every sprocket just so, without looking and on feel alone.

And all of this was happening throughout the two miles between the house and the Trek dealer's shop. In heavy traffic. With all the speeding and illegal turns and the wrong-side overtaking.

The first thing the Trek guys asked when I rolled the bike through the door: "WTF?" The second thing they asked: "And what are you doing riding an old bike that's too large for you?"

Granted, at 51cm, it's probably a good size or two too big for my 5'3" (160cm) build, and it felt it, too. I probably didn't think much of it in 1995, but the choices I had back then were far fewer.

One thing I realized, though, is one thing that I knew all along: drop bars just aren't for me. If I want to continue to enjoy this bike, I'm going to have to consider a straight bar conversion and turn it into some kind of hybrid at some point.

Or I could just try and get more fit.

With that being said, I'm in no hurry at all just yet. As merziac said I out to, I'm going to take my time on this and slowly figure out what I want it to become and what I want to do with it.

***

As I said earlier, those rims just have to go. Looking around the web, I found that ready-built wheels with a 96mm front hub and a 120mm rear hub are nigh on impossible to find, so I'm going to have to either order wheels built around quality hubs or buy the items and build my own wheels - which is the kind of money I'm not willing to spend at this time.

So I asked the Trek dealer if they had any good, affordable rims lying around that could be built around my existing hubs; they said they got some decent ones out of Taiwan for SAR67 (about US$18) apiece that are double-wall - which means we're going to need new spokes as well. That could work. I spent most of last night disassembling the old rims and cleaning all the crud off of the hubs, and I'll be taking the hubs down to the shop later to have them built.



Trek dude trying to get his head around how downtube shifters are supposed to work:



I told him he was born too late

sjanzeir

I've got some great news! But first, a look at the frame after I stripped it bare:






I peered into the insides of the tubes and found no visible signs of rust or corrosion. They seemed to be internally coated. The little vent holes at the ends of the stays show very little surface rust around their edges, but nothing a metal brush wheel couldn't take care of.

I wrote earlier that the old Flyer appeared to have a 70mm bottom bracket shell. That was sloppy vernier caliper work on my part with the cups still screwed into the shell. I measured the shell again after I unscrewed the cups and found that what the frame actually has is a standard, modern-day, 68mm BSA bottom bracket shell! To be sure, I unscrewed the bottom bracket of my modern Mu and tried to fit it to the Raleigh. Both sides screwed all the way in, by hand, without issue, and the spindle spun freely and smoothly:










This opens up a whole range of possibilities. I can either do the sensible thing and order me an inexpensive cartridge of reasonable quality and call it a day, or I can keep things all nice and classic and order an exact replacement of my factory spindle, the races of which are all pitted up. The cups are in tip-top shape, so they're totally reusable. I haven't taken a thorough look at the balls yet; I'll test them on a tray and see how well they roll later.

Now look at those rear dropouts:




Now I'm guessing that this kind of damage will rule out continuing to use the quick release skewer to secure and locate the wheel (I've had problems with this before,) so I'm considering rebuilding the rear hub with a solid axle with regular nuts for a more secure fit. I thought about taking the frame to a machine shop and have them weld over the damage and file it down to proper thickness, but I'm not exactly crazy about the idea of taking this kind of risk.

sjanzeir

Okay, so I thought long and hard about where I wanted to go with this, and I soon figured that I definitely wanted to turn this thing into a straight-bar hybrid! So I built a long list of items around that, including all the stuff that I wanted to change out, upgrade or modernize, did my homework and did the research to figure out what I needed.

With the pound sterling being at favorable rates to the US dollar these days (the Saudi riyal has been pegged to the good ole green Ben for... I don't know, forever now) I hit Saint John St. Cycles (sjscycles.co.uk), because that's where I could get all the stuff I needed in one place, rather than waste my time prancing all over Amazon and Google to get the same or similar stuff at about the same overall cost. I tried to get as much of their on-sale stuff as I could for my build, and they were very cooperative and helpful.

The highlights are a SystemEx 590mm/25.4mm riser bar; Ergon GA1 Evo grips (in white, to keep everything all nice and nostalgic ) a Kalloy adjustable stem (so I can figure out where things are at and see what I need to do later) ; a 118mm UN55 bottom bracket (the factory cup-and-cone spindle was 117.5mm with the original factory five-speed freewheel and hub; I wanted to get a 115mm bottom bracket for a slightly better chain line with the seven-speed cassette that I had swapped in in the mid-1990s, but I could barely pass a 2.5mm allen key between the small chainring and chain stay, so it had to be the 118mm just to be safe); a pair of Shimano Ultegra friction shifters to work with the old Sachs Huret derailleurs (yes, I'm keeping these); a pair of Shimano flat-bar levers to work with the old Winmann calipers (I'm reusing these, too ); and a cheap, discounted PDW Dios Thronous (whatever that means) saddle, in white, to replace the cheap original Italian-made, Raleigh-branded, all-torn-up helm; along with myriad odds and ends to make it all work.

ryansu

Cool to see your old friend get a new life, At my Sunday farmers market I often see old steel roadies re-purposed as flat bar or city bar bikes and to me the important thing is that they are being used and being useful. Enjoy your build and keep the pictures coming! Has the shop cat learned to adjust a headset yet ?

sjanzeir

Oh, Cali is all over this!

As of tonight:




The stem, Handlebar, brake levers, shifters, grips, cable stops (where the downtube shifters used to be,) bottom bracket, original crankset, new Connex chain, saddle, and saddle pinch bolt, are on the bike. Now I'm about to start working on the cabling.

I've rebuilt both bubs with the new Weldtite bolted axles; tomorrow morning I'm going to take them over to the Trek dealer to have new wheels built around them.

sjanzeir

Here she is:

ryansu

Sweet! How does it ride?

sjanzeir

Haven't actually ridden it yet, unfortunately. I'm out of town until Tuesday night, so stay tuned.

sjanzeir

Okay, it's finally roadworthy!

And I'm amazed at just how well this thing turned out! The ride quality is so fabulous and the handling so surefooted that I could ride this old Raleigh for any length of time and never get bored, fatigued or sore! And I've never had so many people who had been just nonchalantly walking by actually stop in their tracks and stare!

I'm glad to report that everything, original and added, worked as it was supposed to. The chain never jumped or skipped, the brakes worked even better than I could possibly have hoped, and the new hardware is just brilliant. Watch this space for a laundry list of all the stuff that came off of and went onto the bike later.

Senior Ryder 00 

Looking good! Thanks for sharing.

Cheers