Rooney 

The Soma site has some good photos illustrating the shape of the bars. I'm gonna see if the shop has an 18t cog tomorrow. For the headlight, I'm thinking of the Foxeye StVZO.

Lamont Cobb

Oh man, just looking at the photos of these Super Course bikes makes my mouth water.

Rooney 

Little setback. On two occasions now, the SRF hub has made an unsettling crunching sound, then the rear wheel has slipped in the dropouts. The first time was not good. The second time, last night, didn't lead to any elevated heart rate, but it did mean I had to nurse the bike back home. A quick search turned up others with a similar issue. I think the net result is that the hub is no good. Luckily, I have a second. I suppose this will be plenty of inspiration to buy a CR18 rim and lace up the spare hub.

I removed the dynamo front wheel. I've got a set of Knog lights that do plenty of what I need at a fraction of the weight and don't have wires to worry about routing/wrapping/taping over. I may revisit the dynamo option later on, but for my purposes (which include carrying the bike up and down four stories) it, at the moment, seems unnecessary.

Road Fan

bulgie , in that picture of your Super Course Sturmey Archer bike, it has a traditional front fender rain flap. Cen you please measure the dimensions or the flap and print them? I’d like to make a few for my couple of fendered bikes. I like them because they are wide enough to give good coverage and flexible enough to not transfer tearing stresses to the actual mudguard.

bulgie 

Sorry, no, I'm not going to do that. The flap is integral to the fender, riveted in place, so I'd need to drill out the rivets to get the flap out. Anyway it's not a great shape, should be longer to come closer to the ground, and tapered so it's full width at the bottom but narrower as you go up.

Just make a shape that does the job and looks nice; you don't need it to match anyone else's, right? Unless you're trying to pass them off as vintage Bluemels flaps, in which case you'll need to get one free of the fender to lay it flat and trace it.

Road Fan

How about just the height of the bottom above ground?

Rooney 

I just posted in the Super Course thread but figured I'd also do a little update here.

I snagged a set of Velo Orange smooth fenders (700x45) at the NYC Bike Jumble, NIB for half price. I need a spacer, metric nut, and bolt to make everything hold together at the chainstay bridge more easily. It's a little rigged up right now with some stuff from the local hardware store. The generous clearances from the 27 to 700 conversion meant there was a lot of space to bridge when installing the fenders. I'm pretty happy with where things are at right now. Maybe some flaps on the fenders and other minor tweaks. I absolutely love riding this thing around the city!

nlerner

^ Great job with that fender line! Looks great!

bikemig 

Nice job. I'm sorely tempted to do a build along these lines for a late 50s Claud Butler Jubilee. It would be cheaper for me to do a 2 x 5 build as I could do that entirely from parts on hand but 1 x 3 seems more appropriate.

Rooney 

It seems like a new headset is on the near horizon. It's been loose for a week or two, and trying to adjust it today (and on Thursday) resulted in either too much play or too much binding. I replaced the ball bearings today but that didn't make any difference. I have a spacer between the cable hanger and the adjustable race, but nothing between the lock nut and the cable hanger. Would a second spacer above the hanger make any difference? I also don't recall if this is a 24 or 26tpi fork. If it's the latter, what's the best method for headset replacement? Replacing everything except the adjustable race and locknut?

Headsets are frustrating.

nlerner

You might as well try that extra spacer but I don’t think it’s going to make a difference. Or you might remove the spacer between the top cone and the brake hanger. I recall setting them up that way fairly often.

if it’s 26 tpi, you’ll be challenged to mix and match headset parts. I’ve often struggled with that.

bulgie 

My SC looks identical to yours, I think it might be a '71 but if not then definitely a '72. Same lugs, decals and other details.
Mine had 26 tpi but I put a Campy headset on it anyway, about 45 years ago. I cut new threads with a Campy steerer die. As expected, the first couple threads come out near perfect but get worse as they get out of phase, and after a half-inch, there's "destructive interference" — the peaks of the 24t coincide with the peaks of the 26t, mostly obliterating them. But then they start getting better as you go further down, the two get back in phase and there are some good threads, before turning bad again if you keep going down. But there's no need to go further.

The upshot was: the locknut had good-enough threads, the spacer and centerpul hanger were over the bad threads, and the screwed race had good-enough threads. The headset adjusted up normally and has been in service that way since. It's a townie, short-hop errands bike for me so it hasn't gotten lots of miles. But I'm a clydesdale, and have used it for carrying front loads, so I'd say it's been well-tested.

No guarantees it would work as well for you, but if you're desperate enough...

I have a Campy steerer die and would be willing to do the deed for you, but shipping the fork might make that impractical. Hopefully you can find someone closer. Note, a 1" x 24 tpi die in a generic die holder might be too risky. Never tried it, but the Campy and VAR (& probably some others) steerer die holders have a pilot that aligns them very co-axial with the tube, that a generic die holder can't match. Since this is a somewhat dicey procedure already, I wouldn't introduce any more ways for it to go wrong, so only use a proper piloted bike steerer tool.

Oh wait, why re-cut the steerer when you can still get 26 tpi headsets? There was no ebay or internet back when I did mine but now I see several on ebay, all from UK sellers, but this one is only $45 including shipping to USA.

Also, I don't mean to insult your mechanic abilities, but is there any chance you've got a ball that jumped the track during assembly? It's very easy to do, especially if you haven't been shown the correct technicque for assembling loose-ball headsets. Lots of people do it wrong.

Last word: Maybe before replacing the headset you should true up all the surfaces in the frame & fork to ensure the problem isn't from misalignment. The crown race seat on the fork and the ends of the headtube must be parallel. Though if this problem is new, then that's not likely to be the cause. Faces that were previously accurately parallel usually don't go out of parallel, short of bending the frame in a crash.

There's some risk in having F&F faced though, if your technician doesn't know about the different diameters. You could end up with too small a crown race seat and/or too large a bore in the head to where your parts now fit loose instead of being press-fit. Also the crown is chrome-plated, which dulls cutters, so truing the crown (if necessary) really should be done on a lathe. I would never use my Campy cutter on a chromed crown, not without removing the chrome locally first.

branko_76 

The old Raleigh headsets can be a pain but more than half the problem is the head-tube of those "bike-boom" era Raleigh's. I've restored a number of them from the early 1970's including a Super Course. They all benefited from facing the head-tubes. Here is a thread where I documented the rebuilding process...

https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...1-headset.html

branko_76 

.

also, flattening and smoothing the spacer helps...apply grease to both sides before installation to aid in adjusting

Rooney 

I haphazardly played around with the headset before work today and found out two things: I may have had one too many bearings up top, and the steerer is 26tpi. I tested the locknut on a mid-80s Trek and only got it on a few turns before running into resistance. I put everything back together, sans extra ball bearing, and it felt better. I may have counted out a few extra bearings when originally setting them aside for the headset overhaul in case I inevitably dropped one. I'll do a more thorough disassembly/reassembly this evening to see if that was happening. Facing the headtube isn't a bad idea.