Nice pile o' parts.

This bike looks familiar, i picked this up about 3 weeks ago, i was surprised how long it was listed for without being scooped up.

Because I am feeling unhappy about the prospects of drilling a cotter out of the just started '77 DL1, I'm posting a shot of my '79 DL1 to cheer me up. Happy New Year, 3speeders!

It bent over using the vise socket method which has always worked before.

Glad to hear it's found a good home.

Yes the gentleman who was selling it has a recycle bin on his property, somebody dumped this bike in it with a similar red 1951 Raleigh sports, i was able to purchase both .

we all feel your pain.

Well, start posting some pictures.

The operation was a success. Successively larger drillings, followed by strategic whacking with a hammer and punch finally worked. Much quicker than the seat post which took about seven weeks of soaking in penetrating oil and moving with a big old pipe wrench.

Glad you got it!! It's a good one. 50s 3 speeds are getting more rare all the time. Birmingham made tall framed even more rare. Keep us up to date. Would love to see this project come along.

Good job. Nice neat work. I know that even with a press, people sometimes end up having to drill out cotters, but I think the concave drive pin on the press centers on the cotter more accurately and allows for more pressure before bending the threaded end than you get with a flat vise jaw. A good excuse to buy a new tool!!

Went on a 20km ride on the DL-1 on Saturday with its new chainring and front drum shoes. The previous chainring (non-Raleigh) had started rubbing too much on the bottom bracket; there have been no problems with this one. This is the 3rd set of drum shoes I've tried in the front hub, and were salvaged from a modern Sturmey Archer XL-RD5 with wrecked gears (a cheap purchase at the local recycling centre). Braking is still best described as 'speed modulation', but then I'm not hammering along on my rides - well, only sometimes. I did have a couple of downhill stretches where I was able to spin out and enjoy the coasting. But only because I was on a bike path with clear views ahead :) . I've yet to bend the brake levers to enable more pull, as Big Chief suggested - Big Chief did you take the levers off when you did this to yours, or did you bend the levers in place?

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4681/...15575806_h.jpgIMG20171230185744 by arty dave armour, on Flickr

I'll have to work on the bell - it started to jam and I had to call out 'ding ding' when approaching people on the path. The internals are slightly warped, and this allows the striker to get stuck in the frame. I should hopefully be able to bend things around to fix this issue. I'm very happy with the ride quality of this bike.

What a beautiful roadster! Glad you found a heron crank. This bike deserves one. Looks great.
I found that I needed at least 3" of travel between the end of the lever and the grip to get the best performance from the rod brakes. Mine are set at 3 1/4". I just used a small pipe and bent them while on the bars. Very carefully. I always go slow cold setting. Lots of small adjustments are always better than fewer large ones.

Haven't been active for a while and missed the British motors back on page 599....he's my Triumph to add to the posts
https://i.imgur.com/yvYKoea.jpg

And to stay on topic, here is my 30's era Hercules 3spd clubman still sporting Dunlop tires or rather tyres
https://i.imgur.com/XZAS0jM.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/VMYIS3x.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/zJkcyxP.jpg

At what point does everyone here replace their drum shoes? Can you describe the feeling for me?

This one was discovered by user @Piff and posted in the "Are you looking..." thread and I suggested he post it here but don't think he did. This bike looks like an Asian-production 3-speed and it's named Sport, not Sports. I was not aware that Raleigh sourced that series of bikes from there. As I noted in the other thread it simply does not look like an English Raleigh. Chainwheel appears to be distinctly un-heron-y and the fenders are insufficiently peaked, among other things. Perhaps one of you experts can enlighten us.

https://sandiego.craigslist.org/csd/...443642334.html

https://images.craigslist.org/00w0w_...F_1200x900.jpg

Nice bike! I'm not surprised to see this crossover between old British bicycles and old British motorcycles. Seems natural to me.

Yeah, you got it right. After the factory in Nottingham shut down these bikes were sold as Raleighs. Made in Taiwan I belive.

Sturmey drum brakes are a mystery. Some work well, some don't, some improve with new shoes, others get worse. I think that the cable actuated models have an edge over the rods. I have a '48 AB hub on this CCM that is a marvel. Feather it to a stop or hit the panic button and burn a 10 foot skid. I hope it never requires service.
Note there is only the one brake on this tank.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pu...w1332-h1022-no

What a cool bike. I don't remember seeing this one before.
I've never had a hand actuated drum brake on a bicycle, but for calipers and rod brakes, I find that there's a place in the lever travel where I want full on brake to be. Like around half or a little more into it's travel. If it's too high or too close to the grip, I loose efficiency in my grip. The inefficiency may be in my hand, but it makes the brakes feel less powerful.

It's really odd to see a Sports without a thimble fork crown! Kind of like a generic three speed with some new decals applied.

Yup, Taiwan. Had these pics in my reference folder.

Attachment 594174

Attachment 594175

nice Superbe, do you find Toronto has quite a number of them around? im surprised how many i see on kijiji
must have been a hot seller in the mid 70s.

very nice, love to have a double bar someday

love the green , very nice bike

Thanks BC, I took a heap of photos that day and this was the only one that looked any good. I like the contrast of blue sky/orange gravel. I much prefer the Heron crank over the utility crank I had on it before.

I measured the travel at only 2 1/2 ". I've been insulating & re-arranging the garage workshop, so probably won't get to tweak the levers til the weekend.

Quote:
Originally Posted by JaccoW
At what point does everyone here replace their drum shoes? Can you describe the feeling for me?

[QUOTE=clubman;20085304]Sturmey drum brakes are a mystery. Some work well, some don't, some improve with new shoes, others get worse. I think that the cable actuated models have an edge over the rods. I have a '48 AB hub on this CCM that is a marvel. Feather it to a stop or hit the panic button and burn a 10 foot skid. I hope it never requires service.

I agree! I have 70mm SA drums that work really well on a bike that is probably almost as heavy as my DL-1. I'm using the big 80's diacompe mtb levers. I'm starting to think that this might be the case - cable pull with a nice big lever will work better than rod pull, which has flexibility and a little slop through it's joints.

Velognome - love the Triumph and that Clubman is cool!

I don't know about drum brakes, but the added lever travel made a substantial improvement on the rod brakes on both of my roadsters. I had a similar problem with my scorcher. I was using the standard Raleigh brake levers with Tektro 559 dual pivot calipers. The front brake was fine, but the rear leaver was full on too close to the grip no matter how close I set the pads to the rim. I added a couple cable stops to the top tube and eliminated 18" of cable housing from the rear brake cable. Just the small amount of travel I gained from eliminating the compression of that housing made a huge difference in braking. Having full on braking at the right spot in the lever travel made a bigger difference that I thought it would.

Interesting that both of them are 23" frames. Took me forever to find one and nowadays they seem to be everywhere.

Thanks for the background info.

These days when the weather is too bad to ride, I'll use my break times to browse the internet and look at vintage bike and motorcycle ads. I would have never had this sort of information back when I used classified ads and flea markets to find bikes. I'll estimate that 21" 3 speeds outnumber 23" by at least 4 to 1. I think I know the reason. Back in my childhood, (early 60s) even though I lived in town where a bicycle would have been very practical and most families only had one car, the sight of an adult on a bicycle was rare. Bicycles were considered a kid thing. This didn't change until the late 60s, early 70s and by then 10 speed bikes started dominating the market.