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Old 02-22-10, 05:07 AM
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Sixty Fiver
Bicycle Repair Man !!!
 
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Join Date: Sep 2007
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A friend gave me a bedraggled 1954 Raleigh Sports a few years ago and I just had not found the time to extract a frozen stem and set to work on bringing this bike back to life.

Over the past few weeks have been working on my new ride.

In 1954 the Sports was fitted with the now obscure EA1 wheel (597mm rim) and as my Lenton is fitted with these I know the challenges of finding suitable tyres. The wheels on the Sports were not the beautiful stainless models and were rather thrashed... the front wheel was beyond repair.

I knew the bike would accept a 650A or 26 by 1 3/8 wheel and tyre as the difference between this and the EA1 is only 8mm but the options for high performance 650A tyres is pretty much nil.

I pondered building up some 650B wheels but thought I should try using a 700c wheelset first, having seen that a number of people have performed this conversion.

The bike came together rather quickly (once I removed that frozen stem) and I took pictures throughout most of the process... I don't think I have taken this many pictures of any bike I have built or owned.

Some befores...

As received...



A work in progress...







Rideable enough to take home to my new shop.


Last edited by Sixty Fiver; 08-12-12 at 01:56 PM.
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