Swap news!

Got a message from Harry that I swapped the MTB wheel with for the frame, He's done a seriously impressive job with it.

Hi,

nice to see someting happening with the old Raleigh. Funnily enough I have a Raleigh 20 frame and forks that also came from the Dublin factory. I'm hanging on to them in the hope of getting enough money to make a nice fixed 20!

I've laced up the rim to my disc hub and fitted it to the bike. This one's my winter commuter (I'm working on it whilst using my Elswick as my "summer" bike). The chainline is 54mm so I had to make a nylon spacer to fit between the disc mounts and the cog. I took an 18t cog out of an old Shimano cluster and drilled 6 holes in it. I'm quite pleased with the outcome but think I'll invest in a proper bolt-on cog as it's ever so slightly off-centre. I think I'll probably fit a 19t cog so I can cope with heavy winter head winds.

Good luck with finishing the Raleigh,

Regards,

Harry

I have been doing a bit of detective work about the bike itself the frame was built in the Dublin. You can see the badge is different, It doesent have the more usual "made in nottingham" but instead has two stripes.

I found this picture of an irish built raleigh record from 1972ish. Same colour and looks very like the original frame.

Apparently the Dublin factory in hanover quay burnt down in 1976 and whilst another factory was built it really amounted to a distribution centre more than a factory, in effect production ceasing with the fire.

The serial gives the date of manufacture as either 1979 or 1969, Im starting to drift towards 1969 as raleigh ceased to used cottered cranks in england in 1977 which my bike has the fire in 1976 also factors in.

I also found a place that will sandblast and powdercoat frames at a good price, I wont be stripping a frame in a hurry again lol

Bike Bits!

Ok, So you cant build a bike without bits. So I set out to get some of the needful on the cheap. A guy Phil I work with also needed a bike and I had an old mountain bike I bought for £50 two years ago I rattlecaned it silver for him and gave it a tidy and he bought it for £40.

I been reading the London fixed gear and single speed forum and had a nosey about in their classified section. www.lfgss.com I managed to track down from one guy a set of drop racing style handle bars, a brake lever and rear track wheel complete with rear sprocket that had a prima miche track hub. Another guy had a matching front wheel with tyre and tube.

Turned out they were all from a raleigh conversion so I was pretty sure they would all fit.












Ebay also came to the rescue and my second pair of adidas sold. That gave me £65.

The bits cost.

Front wheel, tyre, tube =£16 incl postage
Brake level, rear wheel with track hub and sprocket and handle bars = £56

Total £72. Just waiting on front wheel coming tomorrow morning fingers crossed. Spent£7.40 more than I've from selling a few bits, so not so bad.

List of parts still needed.

front brake
chain
handlebar tape
stem bolt.

Bike part 2.

So after stripping the frame of unwanted parts, I started to strip the paint from the frame using some leftover nitromorse paintstripper from table. I ended up needing more paint stripper and some wire wool. I stuck two pairs of old adidas up for sale on ebay and luckily one of them sold for £25. It got spent on.

Montana black 400ml 'Jade' spraypaint x 2 =£9.50


1 x 400ml Primer and 1 x 400mlLacquer £8
1 x hacksaw =£1
1x file =£1
1x can nitromorse £3.98
1 x coarse wire wool £1.98

£25.46

Bike Swaps - Part 1.

Been a while since I blogged but few swaps have been going on in the meantime. I fancied building one of those fixed gear racing bikes, but needed a frame and cheap. So started trawling gumtree, I found an advert for a raleigh frame including saddle, crank and headset/stem.
The frame was a bit rusty but showed promise.

The owner wanted to swap it for a 26" Mountain bike wheel to repair his own fixed gear mountain bike. Sadly I didn't have a wheel but contacted the seller and set about trying to acquire one.

I went down to the lawrence street workshops in the middle of the holylands as it has the "belfast bicycle workshop" in it, hoping to track down a wheel. Sadly its owner, Austin was away but I bumped into Paddy Bloomer.

Paddy builds everything from a peddle powered soundsystem to making a boat from a skip and then sailing it round the canals of venice. He's a great bunch of lads.

Paddy took me round to his workshop that has every kind of bike including sinclair C5 and after a bit of rummaging hoked out a 26" mountain bike wheel.

He didnt want anything for it and told me to get him a pint sometime, but as no good deed goes unpunished after a bit of haggling he settled on 4 tins of guinness as a swap for the bike wheel :).

Later that night I met Harry the owner of the frame and swapped him the wheel for the frame, after stripping of all the stuff I didnt need for the conversion I was left with this...

still turning 4 tins of Guinness into a bike isnt a bad days work.