After some time, finally a new post in this blog. This is about my Bauer, a bike I got off ebay for a very reasonable price.

It came with a Shimano 105 rear derailleur and a Weinmann rear brake. Also the front fender was cracked and the wheels were obviously not original. A matching brake as well as a front fender were found via the CR-List, the best place to look for such parts. Finding the fender was really astonishing as these brilliant red beauties are really rare and never dreamed about eving asking for one. My guess is that this bike was originally sold with those color-coordinated Fenders and the flat touring bars. Shifting must have been a Huret Louison Bobet rear derailleur, since the frame carries double cable stops for these unique double-cable operated super rare units. I subsituted the Shimano-mech with a Huret Alvit which was a common upgrade in the 50ies an sixties. One of my local bikestores even had those nice shifter rubbers in stock which gave a nice additiobn to the classic look.

The wheels were built out of 4-speed (narrower) Pelissier Plume hubs and Altenburger clincher rims. One of those rims was bought about 20 years ago at my LBS as a substitute for another broken rim in my touring bike then. Visiting the store soem month ago resulted in finding a matching second rim, still in it's original wrapper. The saddle, one of those rare alloy railled Ideales came with the bike, and this alone made up for what I paid for the complete bike.

ROTO Parts

Roto was, like REG, a italian supplier of different kinds of small accesories for racing bikes. I came across some of their products from different sources, such as my local bike shop which sold those parts as a cheaper alternative to original Campagnolo parts. My Raleigh had a pair of ROTO pedals which are relatively light and has nice alloy cages. The pedals have Gipiemme dustcaps and are Campy-clones which makes me wonder wether only the cages were produced by ROTO or Gipiemme was the original manufacturer.

I also have a pair of leather pedal straps marked ROTO.

The most interesting parts are their brake shoes called "Super Record". They are made of black anodized aluminium in the typical Campy style but utilise allen head bolts. In comparison to Campagnolo brake shoes and pads they are significantly lighter and might therefore have been a weight tuning thing for racers at the day. Besides they were also a lot cheaper than Campas.

a pleasant ebay find

Ebay is still great for nice finds when looking for old bike stuff. Just three days ago I was able to get a huge number of generic white rubber hoods for non-aero brakelevers. They are older Shimano style and will serve as replacements of freqeuntly ridden bikes with Weinmann or Shimano brakes. They fit those makes perfectly. I have more than i need and I when somebody needs some just send an email.

The saddle mystery

This is one of my mystery saddles. It seems to be really old and ridden and I have no clue how old it is and on which bike it originally belonged. It is marked Bolland, a brand I never have heard of. So if anybody knows more, let me know.
Some more pictures can be seen on my Wool Jersey album check it out here

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.