Nice bike and a case of
Grand Theft Bike!
On Wednesday I stopped into Cupertino Bikes to check out what they had new in C&V.
BTW, if you live in the SF Bay Area or are visiting, it's worth the trip to check them out. They have one of the best offerings of both modern and CV products in the area.
A C&V fellow rider who works there took me over to their storage building for a look around - nothing in my size that I was interested but then I spotted this 1974 Raleigh International frame. In the dim light, it looked great!
I made a low ball offer and it was mine.
I'd always liked the looks of the champagne Internationals from back when they were new. We sold a lot of French bikes (Gitane, Bertin and so on) so it would have been a sacrilege for me to ride a Raleigh!
It's a 57cm C-t-T with a 56cm top tube, complete with a good Campy headset and down tube cable guides.
No rust and the paint is decent from 10 feet but, at 5 feet, the warts begin to show. For starters, a PO had their name deeply engraved into both sides of the top tube. Didn't notice this until I got it out in the light so my low ball offer was justified.
The frame suffers from the poor cosmetics that a lot of early 70's Raleigh frames came with: file marks on the lugs and where the stays and fork blades join the dropouts and so on. But, for what I paid, "5 feet
STOP - don't be gettin' that close to my bike, you perv!"
Soft focus hides the flaws...
The frame has a 75° head tube angle with a 74.5° seat tube. The fork rake is ~60mm (2 1/2") which is odd for a bike billed as a touring model.
During the bike boom of the 70's a lot of the Carlton built Raleigh frames such as the Pro, International and Competition had weird frame geometry. I suspect that the people building the frames used whatever tubing was handy, especially after several pints for lunch!
To digress, back in the summer of 1975, I set out to do all of the passes across northern New Mexico. I was on my road bike with a 99cm wheel base carrying about 50 lbs of gear - camping, fishing, several spare sewups, tools and most importantly, at least a gallon of water.
After kicking my panniers with my heels for a week, I decided when I got home that wanted a touring bike with a long wheel base and long rear stays. Gitane had the Gran Tourisme model but they were vapor ware. The Raleigh International caught my eye but they were "spendy" with all Campy components etc. plus in 1975 they were only available in copper -yech!
I decided to build my own touring bike. We had 3 customers who owned curly stay Hetchens that I used to work on. I remembered that that were so smooth riding that you could go over a speed bump and not feel it.
I measured the geometry on those Hetchens plus I was able to do the same with at least six 21 1/2" and 22 1/2" Raleigh Internationals.
What I found was there was NO standard for geometry on the International!!! The head tube angles ranged from 72° to 75° and the fork rakes from 40mm to 60mm. Worst part was the fork rakes didn't match the head tube angles so the ones with 75° handled beyond twitchy, they were downright squirrely!
I found the same kind of discrepancies on some Pros and Competitions.
This frame and fork is slightly out of alignment so I'm going to have Ed Litton realign it for me. I can do it myself but with the potential for squirrley handling, I want it done perfectly. I may have him de-rake the fork a little too.
Here's the touring frame that I built for myself back then. 55cm C-t-T, 53cm top tube, 55cm for rake, 72° head tube, 76° seat tube and 44.5cm (17.5") chain stays.
It handles just the way I designed it to! I wanted it to be able to come off a long steep pass fully loaded with no wobble or twitchyness.
My days of touring are long past but I'm looking forward to putting the International frame together and doing short group rides on it.
I have all of the correct parts for it but I'm thinking of doing a mix and match with a Rally RD, Campy NR cranks that have been modified to take a 28T chainring or maybe even a Victory triple crank set and a Victory triple FD.
The rear dropouts are 124mm wide. The Pros and Competitions came with wider spacing for 6 speed FWs.
Did International ever come with 6 speed FWs?
verktyg