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'71 Raleigh International Garage Sale Find

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'71 Raleigh International Garage Sale Find

Old 11-16-19, 01:43 PM
  #1  
JacobLee 
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'71 Raleigh International Garage Sale Find

I found this at a garage sale over the summer. I'm new to the forum, and having some trouble posting, so I'm going to see if this works before I write out the whole story again. Details to follow!


Here it is: Raleigh International, 2 front wheels, silca pump.

Last edited by JacobLee; 11-16-19 at 01:46 PM. Reason: highlight title
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Old 11-16-19, 01:54 PM
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Nice! Love that chartreuse finish.
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Old 11-16-19, 01:58 PM
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John E
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Great acquisition. No rear wheel? I am guessing someone wanted a big freewheel, hence the SunTour VGT rear derailleur, which was probably the best option out there if you needed 32 to 34 teeth in back.
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Old 11-16-19, 02:07 PM
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That's a bike I'd like to find! That is a pretty color.
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Old 11-16-19, 02:26 PM
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who doesn't love a nice International? I've got one in copper!

Looking forward to the story. It seems to have survived the decades in decent condition. .... except for that bottle cage that mutated into two. Never seen two mounted like that before! They look to be proper T.A. cages, which are some of the best.

Steve in Peoria
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Old 11-16-19, 02:36 PM
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Gosh, I'd sure like to find an International at a garage sale!
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Old 11-16-19, 04:18 PM
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The Story

I found this lying in the driveway of a garage sale over the summer. The tag said $30. The lady said that her husband had ridden it across the country in the 1976 Bikecentennial. When I told her how cool I thought it was, she said I could have it for $25. She liked the idea that I might actually ride it. I handed her $30, and she gave me $5 back. What a cool lady!


Missing the rear wheel, different derailler.
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Old 11-16-19, 04:35 PM
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I'm clearly hanging around the wrong neighborhoods in Portland!

Welcome to the forum, and know that we're able and willing to help out with getting that beauty on the road.

I'm in SW, a mile or two west of Multnomah Village.
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Old 11-16-19, 04:55 PM
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You got that bike free! That is a cool acquisition and have the honor of the resurrection. I met a guy who was standing next to my bike when I came out of an eatery . He was about my age and had ridden across country on that ride. My bike reminded him of his vintage road bike , a Motobecane Record that was still hanging in the garage. I convinced him to get back on it. A bike that has been across the country has earned the right to keep going.
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Old 11-16-19, 04:55 PM
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Deal of the year! Great bike, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
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Old 11-16-19, 04:59 PM
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I certainly will!

Hey, I’ve been trying to write longer posts to describe this bike in detail, but I keep getting automatically logged out and my long-winded details all vanish. Any suggestions?
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Old 11-16-19, 05:20 PM
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Nice find OP! I once found a Miyata 912 at a garage sale, it was hanging in the rafters and I asked the nice lady running the sale about it, is it for sale? Oh my husband used to commute on that a few years ago, how much I asked? Oh how about $25 dear? SOLD. Based on the cobwebs in the spokes a few years ago might have been a few decades ago for commuting LOL.

Have fun with it and by all means take @gugie up on his offer, he has experience with old Raleigh's and quite the bike cave sorry Atelier
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Old 11-16-19, 05:22 PM
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Originally Posted by JacobLee
I certainly will!

Hey, I’ve been trying to write longer posts to describe this bike in detail, but I keep getting automatically logged out and my long-winded details all vanish. Any suggestions?
I think there’s a “keep me logged in” box that you can check.
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Old 11-16-19, 05:25 PM
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Originally Posted by JacobLee
I certainly will!

Hey, I’ve been trying to write longer posts to describe this bike in detail, but I keep getting automatically logged out and my long-winded details all vanish. Any suggestions?
...ask in the user assistance forum. I've heard of this a couple of times before from others. In the meantime, if you have Word or some other similar program, just type it out in word, then cut and paste the whole story at one time. I love these stories where a great bike like that sees the light of day again after a long sleep in the back of some garage. Bikes are happier when ridden.
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Old 11-16-19, 05:26 PM
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Originally Posted by nlerner
I think there’s a “keep me logged in” box that you can check.
...yes, you definitely need to check that box when you first sign on.
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Old 11-16-19, 05:59 PM
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Lovely bicycle. Hope it fits, and you get to enjoy it a lot.
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Old 11-16-19, 06:20 PM
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That was a steal
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Old 11-16-19, 06:29 PM
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My Internation Find

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?

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Last edited by verktyg; 11-16-19 at 06:43 PM.
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Old 11-16-19, 06:50 PM
  #19  
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The Rest of the Story

I still haven’t found the “Keep Me Signed In” button, so if anyone can enlighten me, I’d appreciate it.




Where was I? Yes, The lady said that her husband and son had ridden the 1976 Bikecentennial route. After that, it looks like this thing was hung up to gather dust. One of the owners preparations for the trip was to engrave his initials and social security number into the down tube just above the rear shifter. I fuzzed most of the numbers out in the photos, but I think this is a cool detail. No plans to refinish; I love the patina! I asked if they had seen the rear wheel anywhere, and she said that her son had looked, and not found it. The extra front wheel is a Weinmann clincher 27 X 1 1/4, so I bet the owner had a set of clinchers built for his cross country trip. It is also built on a high-flange Nuovo Record, and has a Schwinn Le Tour tire. The spokes are not stainless on the extra wheel.




I got it home and realized it was my size (approx 58cm) and my age. A little research revealed that I had found a great bike. I felt a little guilty, but at least I didn’t try to lowball her $30 asking price.




After a month of Craigslist searching for a replacement rear wheel, or even a hub I could use, I found a set of Mavic Open Pros laced to high-flange Nuovo Record hubs with Compass Jon Bon Pass tires and a Shimano 5 speed freewheel. $120. I saw high-flange 36H rear hubs for sale for this price, so I felt like it was a pretty good score. Heck, for $145 total, I feel like this was the score of the century.




A restoration awaits, and then maybe some tweaking. I wish I could still ride without a granny, but that’s just not the case anymore!




Any suggestions?



Who wouldn't fall in love!


One of the big shops in Portland back in the old days. NE Broadway and NE 7th.


Probably the original front tire. These bikes came with 27" tubulars. The wheel in the background is a 27 x 1 1/4 which he probably had built so he could use clinchers. It's sporting a Schwinn Le Tour.



Craigslist wheels.


Ahhhhh
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Old 11-16-19, 07:15 PM
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After my tour this summer, I will be hotly pursuing an International and/or a Professional. I've lusted after one since the 1970's and now its time. I may only have 10-15 good years with them, but by golly we all have our bucket list items, right?
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Old 11-16-19, 07:25 PM
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...these bikes are a relatively easy fit for fenders . So I guess that's a plus if you live in Portland
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Old 11-16-19, 08:04 PM
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I think it's the remember me checkbox at the top right before you log in.
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Old 11-16-19, 08:08 PM
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My '71 Int'l used to look like this:


IMAGE_294.jpg by neal_lerner, on Flickr

Then I had @gugie work his gugificazione magic, and now it looks like this:


IMG_9361 by neal_lerner, on Flickr


Untitled by neal_lerner, on Flickr
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Old 11-16-19, 08:24 PM
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Originally Posted by JacobLee
I certainly will!

Hey, I’ve been trying to write longer posts to describe this bike in detail, but I keep getting automatically logged out and my long-winded details all vanish. Any suggestions?
Yes- sometimes hqppens esp if you have adblock software or no tracking allowed.
select the text periodically and save it- in the apple world "clipboard" I'm sure windows has similar.
then if you get Locked out, re-enter and paste your text in.

Nice bike- I have one slightly smaller.
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Old 11-16-19, 08:56 PM
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Great find at a great price! I have a 75 International and last year I ruined the rear wheel by following a car through a left turn at a stoplight a little too closely. The car completely obscured a pot hole in the shape of a ditch, and by the time I saw it, all I could do was try and bunny hop it (cars in front of me, cars behind me and everyone rushing to make it through the left turn arrow). I managed to get the front end over but landed the back wheel squarely in the hole. I nearly fell off the bike in a very busy intersection. I pedaled through the rest of the intersection but had to get off the bike immediately. I was okay but the rim was bent badly. It took a few months but I finally found a suitable matching replacement that I could afford. For those few months I really missed my International. I could never leave mine just sit unridden for years on end, so it just baffles me that you found yours in a garage sale after years of neglect. Anyway congratulations and I hope you enjoy yours as much as I enjoy mine.
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