My first Raleigh Competition was a '71-72 white with lagoon blue trim covered in Krylon and exterior latex housepaint. Nervex Professional lugs, and either a very nice 531 replacement fork or some uncatalogued Raleigh variant with a crown I can't identify. I fished it out of a trashpile at the side of the road as a frameset with some Stronglight 93s and some bent handlebars. It was an amazing bike that I should have kept.
My current Competition is a Capella-lugged example from 1973 that proudly proclaims beer isn't just for breakfast anymore - a headlug point stands proud of brazing material, the rear brake cable stop bridge is several degrees off kilter - but it, too, has an amazing ride quality. My 23.5-in specimen has 73x73 angles, 40 mm of trail and a 41.5-in/105 cm wheelbase - someone described them as '70s bikes with '30s geometry. For a while there I had a '73 Gran Sport which had identical geometry whilst using different chainstays, lugs, crown and dropouts.
They're fun bikes to experiment with. My first one was built up as a 27-in single-speed, a 27-in wheeled 10-speed, then 700C and a 14-speed drivetrain, then finally settling on a fixed-gear setup at which it excelled. My current one is my single-speed-with-options fattish-tired all-roads mount, sporting 42/44T chainrings with a Surly Dingle fixed-gear 17/19T cog on one side of the rear hub and a White Industries Dos Eno 20/22T freewheel on the other. I can get 70-in pavement fixed, 60-in gravel fixed, 60-ish-in freewheel and 52-in gentle singletrack freewheel gears without cross-chaining running 35 mm Continental Cyclocross tires with some space left for mud, wobble or human error.
