bear_a_bug 

Well, it's that time of year: When the riding is reduced mostly to commuter miles for those of us in the colder climes, thoughts turn to our parts stash, spare frames, and needless bike builds.

This one was the superfluous #5 in my stable. I have no need for it, but you can't leave an early 70s Raleigh Competition frame hanging. This one now lives at my office downtown in the Loop for lunch get-togethers or random errands conjured out of thin air to get away from my desk for a bit.



Contrary to prevailing opinions on the correct number of bikes to own, I've found myself very comfortable with 4:
The Commuter/Touring 650B

The Grocery-getting Riv-inspired MTB Townie

The 650B Rando

The Zippy Early 90s Handbuilt Racing Bike with Skinny Tires


But this Raleigh really doesn't need to be here.

Anyone else got that black sheep bike that doesn't really fit in to your stable, but can't seem to part with?

RobbieTunes

Pic is before I mounted the front brake how I want it.

cheffyjay

i have 2 bikes with sentimental value that i pretty much never ride.

Bianchigirll 

norcalmike

I bought this mid 80s Novara A-T at Goodwill a few months ago. It was 37 bucks so I figured why not?
early Novaras were pretty decent bikes.
I can't bring myself to get rid of it.

Slightspeed

This is mine, I guess, neither vintage nor modern, a 2002 Aluminum Allez. My steel Bianchi got killed by a car and I needed a bike. Found this at Performance as a new, year end close out for $399. I've since moved on to fancier modern bikes and built up a nice vintage collection, so, the Allez is the odd duck. After a couple of sales attempts fell thru, its now my post office and bank run bike. I can lock it up, let it out of sight, briefly and not worry about it ... too much. Sunday we went bird watching, and I left it chained (wheels padlocked together) to a chain link fence for over an hour. It was still there later. I still enjoy riding it, with upgrades to carbon fork, ITM stem, 105 brakes, and Ultegra FD, the parts are maybe somewhat valuable to leave chained up. In do still enjoy riding it, quick, responsive, a little hard riding, but still part of the family.


Chained up, just left of the big wheeler, for bird watching.

francophile 

For me this was a real weirdo, I laughed when I first saw it and not just because of the black/white barf tape and rotten white brake hoods, plus my disdain for unicrown forks, and we can also add in the regular warnings you hear about bonded frames.

Reality is, it's under 20#, super responsive, I thoroughly enjoy it. I've never seen another one in my life. I doubt I'll ever get rid of it.

Bianchigirll 

^ Bonded Ti main tubes with a 753 triangle? Interesting

dddd

I found this Windsor Pro ten years ago in Goodwill's Dumpster, having looked to have spent a good ten years outdoors with half of it's paint falling off, it was simply discarded whole.

The Nuovo Record parts were needed for my garage-sale-find Raleigh Pro having no original parts, so I was left with just a too-small frame with a fork that someone had de-rusted using a bench-grinder(!) before allowing it to rust over again.

The Raleigh went together first, as mostly original, but with it's Dura-Ace brakeset, Cinelli bars and stem and some 27" wheels. Still it rode great for more-sporting rides.

Then I completed the removal of all remaining paint from the Windsor, revealing a fully-chromed frame! I had to terminate a couple of cracks in it's seat lug using a drill, then I selected a longer (suspension) fork that would raise the headtube and slow the bike's upright geometry at the same time.
It came together with the proverbial "dog's breakfast" of mixed parts, and offered a nice, sporting ride with it's Campag 10s levers and Shimano 9s derailer moving the chain across a Shimano 8s cassette. It really gobbles up the worst of our broken foothills pavement with it's Paris-Roubaix air fork and USE suspension post.

francophile 

Alulminum lugs. Ti / 753 triangle and maybe stays too? 531 fork. I legit DO NOT understand why these weren't better received, except I hear the price was absurd. The ride is absurdly awesome. Here's some data pertinent to the (Dynatech) technology from Raleigh:

francophile 

There's a thread over here about them, where Hilary Stone chimed in to chat some about it, you can see the above pictured black sheep with its barf tape still intact. I think there are one or two other threads here on BF where you can find more details. I've been on the hunt for a USA '92, '93 and '94 catalog (pretty sure that's the year range) to try to find this model, I think it would be a fun addendum to having the bike, but they seem scarce. I suspect mine came with all Shimano 600 drivetrain, but wasn't mad about the Mavic additions a PO made.

Chr0m0ly 

Sheesh, I have some of these...
My collection has been focused to touring bikes, I like the ride, the fender and rack possibilities, and they're still, you know, BICYCLES, so I've never found them to be unresponsive because of a degree of fork rake here, or a cm of chainstay there.




So here is a 2 sizes too small CF wrapped alloy tube, road racing bike with a CF mountain bike flat bar on a riser stem.

This daft thing won't take a fender or a rack and has like, no tire clearence. It is stupid fast, and with the upright bars, turns before you finish thinking about it. All it wants to do is pull wheelies. Riding it makes you laugh.

dddd

As far as the top-tier Technium offerings, their pricing was actually extremely fair, the 753 main-tubes model with Dura-Ace STI being I believe the first production bike to break below $2k having this complete 74xx gruppo!

It was good enough of a deal for one Valley Spokesman member to buy one and strip it, then sold me the frame for under $100 a few years later!
I built it up with new 9s Ultegra STI levers that I sourced cheap at the Interbike Outdoor Demo, then built wheels up and dug through my parts inventory to build a pretty nice 1997-era bike using this frame.
I too found little to complain about the 753 model, other than the shift boss getting forced off (by my ham-handed use of too long of a screw). I glued it back onto it's peg and got some years of riding out of it, a bike that got a LOT of comments about the beauty of it's pearl-white paint and green-red-gold-leaf graphics.

rseeker

Maybe I'm overlooking it but I don't see, what was the actual bonding process? Something with glue/epoxy, or maybe electrically-stimulated metal bonding?

ryansu

He only said that bike rode smooth enough for Jehovah.....

repechage

And here I thought this was going to be a Medici thread.