Price: $250, Size: 56 cm
With a heavy heart, I've decided to sell my 1972 Raleigh Record road bike. This rig has served me faithfully for commuting and recreational rides for years, but with my latest project finished, it's not getting much use and it deserves better than to collect dust in my garage. I bought what was left of this bike circa 2007-2008. I really wish that I would've had the presence of mind to snap some pictures of this bike as soon as I brought it home, because I quickly realized that it wasn't even worth the gas needed to haul it to the dump. But I stubbornly pressed on with the restoration anyways. I'm glad I did; this has been a great bike. I worked on it continually - adding, rebuilding, and altering things here and there - until it came to its current state a couple years ago.
Here is a comprehensive list of the major changes and replacements that brought this bike back to life. The old wheels were in piss poor shape, so they were recycled. In their place, I bolted on a set of brand new wheels with Alex rims and a cheap Falcon freewheel (I've found that I like the Falcon freewheels better than the Shimano freewheels because they're well built and simple, whereas Shimano always tries to church things up). I also slapped some new rim strips, tubes, and rubber onto the wheels. The biggest investment for this rebuild was the drivetrain. I ripped out the shitty old cotter cranks and axle a while back and had a Phil Wood press-fit bottom bracket installed, along with a lightly used Sugino crankset. And since there was no way I was putting the old rusty pedals on my sweet new cranks, I added some shiny new MKS Sylvan road pedals. The original leather saddle on the bike had completely disintegrated, so I replaced it with a Brooks CR-3 vinyl saddle. It's not as fancy as a nice leather saddle, but it's super comfortable, looks pretty nice, and I don't have to fuss over it like I do the leather saddles that are on a couple of our other bikes. And of course the bars were retaped - several times now - and the cables and housing were all ripped out and rerun.
I can't stress enough how well dialed in this machine is. It's comfortable, fluid, and shifts smoothly. I should note that the hubs should probably be repacked sometime soon and it may need new rubber sometime in the next couple years depending on how heavily it's used. I left the frame in the state that it was in when I bought it, so it's pretty beat up. I thought that might be a bit of a theft-deterrent. But while there are a number of chips and scratches, there's no observable rust. Oh, and those halfsy toe clips in the pictures don't come with the bike. Those are all mine.
The frame size is 56 cm. I'm about 5'8" and the bike is definitely a little big for me. I guess I'd recommend it for someone 5'9"-6' or thereabouts.
I'm asking $250 for this bike. I'd like to get more out of it, since this doesn't come close to covering the cost for the parts that I put into it, but I just don't think it would be reasonable to ask any more than that for an old bike. So if you're interested, shoot me an email at cyclelikeastringer@gmail.com and we'll set up a test ride.
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