livedarklions

My sister lived there in the 1980s. Beautiful place. I remember lots of loons (the winged kind).

restlessswind

Several LBS's sell Raleigh in my area, including a large reputable dealer, https://www.mikesbikes.com/ and an independent dealer, Elite Bicycles - A Family Bike & Scooter Shop serving Citrus Heights, Roseville, Folsom, Orangevale, Fair Oaks, and the Greater Sacramento area both Raleigh dealers.
Not just mail order.

livedarklions

Wheelworks in the Boston area is selling them. Also a large reputable dealer.

DorkDisk

2 years ago I worked in a shop that sold Raleigh. Their road bikes at the time were pretty decent, in par with other brands at that price point.They do not compete in all sectors like other larger brands but if they have what you are looking for, they are quality for the money

fietsbob

One of the bike lines my LBS carries is Raleigh, today.. I find they are fine..

Raleigh, in USA is a Pac Rim sourced bike ... a business requirement to be cost competitive .....

Few bikes" other than Brompton are made in London, or Nottingham England, I met 1 fellow, in Nottingham, on a bike tour through the country, [1991]

He made frames by hand, There, in the basement (ground floor) of a 400 year old house..

* the regional bike shop selling bikes they made the frames for is now pretty much History, there still were a few back then..









...

rollagain

Holy spin-cycle! Where's the chainring? Is there some up-gearing hidden in the motor unit? If not, this is just an MTB-shaped electric moped with muscle power only available as an emergency backup.

fietsbob

its a mountain climber the market out here has Hunters buying them.. timber company lands allow them behind the locked gates..
considering them a bicycle, not a motorbike (Less fire hazard.)

radroad

I believe Bosch uses 2.5x internal reduction gearing.

jbell_64

I bought a brand new tamland a couple years ago for under $800 shipped to my door . Can't beat the price for 105 groupset, and carbon fork on a steel frame. The weinman wheels were junk and had a hub crap out at 500 miles. It gave me an excuse to upgrade wheels, which i was planning on anyway, but i was still irritated that they were that bad. I see they are now no longer using those wheels....

greatscott

Raleigh even in their original hay day were never quality bikes, sure some were expensive, but true to the British way their quality control was often spotty. Having said that the modern Raleigh/Diamondback bikes on the upper end have gotten high reviews. Look up the reviews on the internet for Raleigh Clubman Carbon, the bike got 4 1/2 to 5 stars. Diamondback bikes on the lower price points like the Hannjo series have consistently came out as best buys and quality for the price, even their top of the line Andean 3 Pre Built got rave reviews by both users and windtunnel testing. SOOOOO, I think those two brands are better then most of what Bikes Direct sells except maybe BD's titanium bikes, and I think those two companies offer more bang for the buck then what bike shops sells. You don't have to take my word for it, you can google the best road (even replace the road with mountain) bikes to buy under a $1,000 and Raleigh and/or Diamondback will come up consistently.

Joe Bikerider

slowgo

base2 

My thoughts exactly! You beat me to it! That book is a treatise on the concept. I've read it 3 times over the years & each time got a deeper meaning. That book is one that heavily influenced me...That, & Cosmos by Carl Sagan & A Brief History of Time by Hawking. Both of which I've read (and understood) twice.

Man, I love this forum.

bakerjw

My only fear as brand names get bought up and punched out of the Asian factories is the materials that are used. If you have a stripped down WalMart frame and compare it to a top name stripped down frame, they might look similar on the outside. Once you inspect welds and wall thicknesses you will probably find that the cheap bike is made with much heavier tubing with substandard welds. We have that problem with our aluminum tandem frame. It is aluminum and very heavy. Our new steel custom tandem will likely come in weighing less and will be a much more pleasant ride.

Not that Raleighs are bad. Just that I hope that build quality is maintained.

Hiro11

I like my '17 Stuntman a great deal. It's a unique bike.

One downside to most Raleighs (and many non-high end bikes these days): cheap, no-name hubs that need frequent tightening and crappy bottom brackets that fail quickly. A little cone-wrenching and a $30 XT BB solved both issues for me.

Also, regarding the comment above on "Asian factories": as I'm sure you know essentially every bike is "punched out" in Asia these days. Also, Raleigh uses brand-name tubing, for example the Stuntman is made out of 631.

madoser

How do you like the tourist 2018? i am looking at the tourist 2018 for $250 or the creme caferacer uno for $399

Bonzo Banana

In its heyday Raleigh was huge making entry level bikes and top end bikes with lightweight reynolds tubing. The quality of the bike was pretty much related to how much you were prepared to pay. Some of the old Raleigh bikes were absolutely stunning engineering for their time. Nowadays Accell are just importing bikes from Bangladesh and slapping the Raleigh brand on them and they are fine serviceable bikes but the factories they use change as Accell finds a cheaper factory. The certification today is far, far stricter than in the past and brakes are far more effective and the use of cheap factories in the far east has bought down prices considerably. The newer cheap high carbon steel frames are getting close to the properties of chromoly steel for strength to weight ratio.

My brother had a Carlton bike back in the day, part of Raleigh and it was absolutely fantastic for the money, it wasn't particularly expensive but was priced slightly above the normal Raleigh range. In contrast a childhood friend who was quite light had his Chopper bike frame break on him as he was cycling. I was also riding a much abused Chopper at the time that I got very cheap in a distressed state and weighed perhaps 50% more than him as much taller and a bit fatter as a child and my bike was fine. I was also more adventurous doing stupid wheelies and jumps because my bike was in garbage condition where as his was pristine in comparison. I would do many stupid things that he would never do. Just making the point that manufacturing quality might have been a bit inconsistent on the Chopper which was a mass market bike produced in a high volume factory.

Raleigh/Carlton carbon fibre bike back in the late 60s.

VeeBee

the quality all everything in the current world seems to be lower . I have a 1980's frame which is still in okay condition, just needs a respray.

Wilfred Laurier

Funny you should make that comparison, as Panaracer, Miyata, Nishiki, Bridgestone, etc. are generally considered a high-water mark for quality. I have owned a few vintage Raleighs, and while they have style and are durable, they generally do not look nearly as well made as '80s Japanese stuff. I have less experience with the Raleigh Professionals and Internationals, and more with Records and Grand Prix, and if I had a choice between a '70s Grand Prix and an entry level '70s Fuji or Miyata, I would take the Japanese bike 10/10 times.

I was reading an interweb thread a few days ago where someone was looking for a used road bike and had found an Peugeot for sale, and a commenter said how good the European road bikes of the era were. That was utter horse crap... the Euro bikes (esp. entry level French bikes) were awful things. Maybe durable enough, but flexy and not too light, and saddled with European derailleurs and components that were the reason Shimano got so big so quickly. Japanese frame manufacturing went out of style because it was becoming too expensive... but relics from that era are fine bicycles and are far superior to Old Raleighs.


While the 'Made In...' sticker seems less prestigious, I promise you that the modern Asian made Raleighs are superior to the Nottingham ones in every way, from weight and performance, to alignment, to straightness of sticker placement. While the old Raleighs were 'hand made', they weren't made as we think of a small builder carefully making individual frames - most were 'unit brazed' - meaning the tubes and lugs and fittings were roughly assembled together, then pushed (by hand) into an oven to complete the brazing. It was a mass production method that could have been done with robots, but they failed to make the investment in robotic technology that could have resulted in consistent and decent quality. But because it was a mass production method relying on human imperfection, the alignment was mediocre-to-bad, the joints were ugly, and there were generally no mounting points or braze ons, unless they were built into a lug or some other part that could not be left out. Cantilever brakes were impossible and water bottle cages had to be held on with clamps.

mstateglfr 

Ha- not sure how I missed this the first time around.
Its always fun to read a viewpoint about history that is totally different from so many others that Ive read, concerning a time period that I wasnt around for.

I have read over and again that many Raleigh bikes back in the 70s and early 80s(that were made in England, not Japan) would need to be faced, reamed, and even realigned before reaching the sales floor. The number of times Ive read that seat stays were held to the seat tube with paint or flux is shocking.

You would really rather have a mid-level 70s bike boom Raleigh over an '87 Miyata 912 or an '88 Panasonic DX5000? The fit and finish arent even close. The dropouts on a Prestige frame DX5000 are fantastic- nicely scalloped and not just bulleted then pressed.



As an aside- a $125 bike in '74 is a $650 bike in '19 based on inflation. I would take one of Raleigh's road bikes at $650 today each and every time over a new in box '74.
https://www.raleighusa.com/merit2-r143 $640 shipped to your door.
https://www.raleighusa.com/merit2 $630 shipped to your door.

restlessswind

I enjoy my old Raleigh because it is neat, not practical. It's pretty, but at best, sloppy. For a 1974 bike, you'd think it was built in the 1930's. I like the nostalgia, but I would never give up my Surly. I'm actually considering a NOS Raleigh Special 3i cruiser for farting around on.

Phil_gretz

During the bike boom, when we poured over bicycling gear, magazines, year-end digests and gawked at bike shop windows, only one of my friends rode a Raleigh. It might have been a Grand Prix. He could ride wheelies with that bike. Nobody else could do that with a 10-speed that I knew.

Why did no one else ride a Raleigh? We weren't impressed by them. I know that I wasn't. Was I influenced by print media, first hand inspection, urban myths... I have no idea. Most of us rode French bikes, but there were a few Falcon Merckx's, LeTours, and the odd Italvega that I recall.

My sister had (and still has) a Raleigh 3-speed that she rode in college.

Fast forward to today, and I still have no interest in Raleigh products at all. None. Would I buy one? No, because there's nothing special about them. Quality? I couldn't tell. It's probably better than it was in the 1970s.

Bonzo Banana

I really can't agree with your comments, Accell use very low end factories typically frames from Bangladesh and those are not the greatest in quality with paint that is easy to chip off and poor welding occasionally. They don't bother to machine the internals of the seat tube properly consequently they often scratch the seatpost when you adjust the height of the saddle. Manufacturing quality is inconsistent and I would say far worse on average. If you compared Taiwan to European frames you'd have a point but just a broad 'far east' description means you are including the very cheapest, lowest end factories that budget brands use nowadays and I certainly can't agree with that.


I remember speaking to a small cycle shop owner about 3 years ago, he was close to retirement and he stated how in the old days someone would buy a bike and you wouldn't see them again. That bike might last the owner decades and people did their own maintenance pretty much as the norm and the manuals included full maintenance information. In contrast modern bikes were often replaced much more quickly. People always looking to upgrade, much higher frame failure rates either through physical damage or fatigue, it's a much more disposable product and they are engineered that way as disposable incomes have become greater and manufacturing costs reduced. He also made the point that in the old days the bikes were often pretty much ready to go with basic assembly but modern bikes need the bike shop to do much more work, adjusting gears, truing wheels etc, something that many customers wouldn't see.You only have to look in modern manuals about regularly checking your frame for cracks and issues before riding and their warning at least for lightweight road bikes that they are not designed to last a long time.


It's like when people are going to go on a long tour on crap roads with an overloaded bike do they consider carbon fibre or aluminium, no they choose a classic steel frame, maybe an old frame that could be 30 years old even or just a modern steel frame but the point is it's a product engineered to last. Also all these past European brands had both good and bad frames. They would often have basic mass produced high tensile steel frames at entry level and great quality hand made frames made of advanced tubing at the top end, same brand completely different quality level. Also the recycling rate of modern bicycles is absolutely huge, people that buy bikes don't ride them and then chuck them out a few years later. Sadly many modern bikes simply don't work well and need frequent maintenance. Nowadays people are always adjusting and cleaning and lubing their chain in the old days you had 3 speed hubs and fully enclosed chains that you could go out in, in all weathers. The concept of a bike that simply works from day one and you might get away with just pumping up the tyres for the first few years seems like an alien one compared to modern bikes.


Bikes of the past were comparatively much more expensive and there was customer expectation that the product would last a very long time and it was engineered for that. You couldn't buy a cheap dual suspension walmart bike that would be scrap value in only a few months when the suspension stopped working.

Kevin R

I am riding a MILITIS 3 raleigh carbon frame i built up from scratch going into 3 years now. The bike has stood up well to the bad road conditions i have to contend with.....
those road conditions is what broke my Raleigh Dyna Tech 700 frame .....

hope to upload pictures soon.

mstateglfr 

Take this to the c&v forum and I bet you will get quite a few posters who would reference working in shops back 40 years ago where bikes were torn down and properly faced, chased, and aligned due to low quality/tolerance manufacturing. Add in poorly brazed stays too.

Perhaps those memories are the exception, but based on what else I've both read and seen, I don't think it always was.