My Raleigh

The featured bike is my Raleigh which I got in the summer of 2006 via ebay. I bid on the bike because there were only 30 minutes left until the end of the auction and only one or two bids at 10 €. As the bike looked kind of promising in the blurry pictures and the description was rather vague but mentioned the bike being suitable for "L'Eroica", I thought I take a chance and typed in a bid of 50 € before I shut down my computer and went home.
Much to my surprise the next day I discovered that I had won the auction for a mere 20 €. The coming weekend I made the trip to where the seller lived. It was only one driving hour away and since the price was so low the bike got my girlfriends approval upon telling her I will sell or part it when it turns out to be a "bad bike". I do not have to explain here that such a thing does not exist in a bikemaniacs world.
When arriving there I found out it was not only older than I expected but also not a bad bike. It was in fact a Raleigh in it's original colours, in a not too cruel shape. The former owner asked, if I really needed to take the mounted short fenders and, of course I was more than happy, to get rid of them. I took it home and cleaned it up a little bit, to see which parts were missing or not original. The front mech and the according shifter was missing, the wheels were not true and obviously not the originals, the bike was sold with and a terrible plastic saddle was mounted. Fortunately the Weinmann brakes with levers and Carlton hoods were there as well as the rear Simplex mech. There also was a GB bars and stem combo which I never had seen before. Pedals were Rotos which did not look very british, just like the rims which were Nisis laced to Gnutti skewered hubs. I cleaned up the bike a little bit, added a Suntour Spirt front derailleur I had lying around, as well as Suntour shift levers. I also changed the wheels for a pair of Normandy hubs/ Weinmann concave clincher rims, which came to me on my Cinelli B model. Since the wheels on the Cinelli were rather english/french and the ones on the Raleigh rather italian I just swapped them. I took the bike out for ride as soon as everything was fixed so far. I was immdiately impressed by the handling and the comfortable position on the GB Randonneur bars. The bike was also responsive and stable, fit me well and was just a blast to ride. So parting was not at all an option. I then also changed the cotton bar tape. This appeared to be dirty white at first but turned out to be faded black upon removing it. One of the former owners had covered the bars with a couple of layers of paper packing tape. I suspect this should give more comfort or more dampening. I removed everything, cleaned the bars of glue residue using gasolene. I then wrapped the bars with black tressostar cotton tape I had on hand. Looked nice braked horrible - no wonder, the brake pads were worn and hardened out. To improve braking I installed fitting replacement pads I had around which were not original. Braking was better but also a lot louder. Definitely no need for a bell with that setup.
Then I started to research the model history of the bike. With the help of the CR-List and Sheldon Brown's excellent Retro-Raleighs site I soon found out that it was a 1975 Gran Sport model. It demanded for a Brooks B 17 saddle and white plastic bar tape. Since I had lots of white Tressostar tape around I decided to cover the bars with a second layer of that. Soon I found a NOS 1977 marked B 17 from a dutch ebay seller wich was so affordable that I could not resist buying. It has the chrome rails and was only half the price of the actual production saddle which has black rails. Another seller in England offered a Simplex Prestige front mech and vinyl textured bar tape - I just had to have it. Summer ended and the bike was getting nicer and more original.
Last week I decided to stop by at one of my local bike stores, which I knew, has lots of old stuff. Upon asking I got a pair of nice french Atom pedals and - hooray - a set of red Weinmann brake pads. Being there I also bought a set of white leather toe straps from ROTO and nice italian pedal cages.
Checking the net at home and my newly found parts, I discovered that the pedals were ATOM 440s which were the pedals stated as original equipment in the 1974 Raleigh catalogue. The specs also showed that the original Hubs were - you guessed it - Normandys with Weinmann rims....So now my bike is in almost original spec'd condition and most of the parts were there before or came to me by coincidence. So the bike is a good one and turned to one of my favourite rides.