Latest acquisition - Raleigh 531 touring frame

I recently won this repainted Raleigh (see attached pic) from eBay; the paint layer on the BB shell underside is a wee bit thick so I can't make out the frame number. However, it has double bottle bosses, rear rack mounts and a sloping crown often found on mid 80s-early 90s 531 Raleighs, whilst the seat stay caps have the serif all-caps "RALEIGH" embossed detail, so is fairly modern (the BB is designed to take a plastic gear cable guide plate too) in relative terms; to sum up, a lot of the little details seem common to my ca.1989/1990 Quadra II. Any ideas as to possible model? It has horizontal not vertical rear ends with single guard/rack eyes which seems to rule out one of these....

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=252157

....as well as the Royal or Randonneur. Interestingly, unlike all 3 of those models it's designed for bar-end levers only as there are no down-tube bosses, just brazed on head-tube gear cable guides of a pre-Ergopower type, much like an old-school CX machine....but it's clearly built for touring so isn't a CX bike of any sort! Front fork and rear frame dropouts are all stamped "RALEIGH" with screw adjusters on the horizontal rear ends. :?

Done a bit more digging - could well be a Gemini 18 hybrid??

David

I believe Raleigh also made touring bikes for a number of different shops, I believe there was a batch made for F.W. Evans along with several other shops who BITD specialised in such things, the fork crown looks very much like the one on my Evans. Get it built up and ridden, if its 531st it will be a nice bike to ride all day every day.

Looks similar to this,apart from the down tube braze ons
http://www.flickr.com/photos/74418119@N ... 4675787816

G o'D designed frame , built in Nottingham SBU.

bagpuss":2myooolh said:

Looks similar to this,apart from the down tube braze ons
http://www.flickr.com/photos/74418119@N ... 4675787816

G o'D designed frame , built in Nottingham SBU.

Click to expand...

Not one of those, they had vertical dropouts with separate rack/guard eyes. Everything seems to be pointing towards it being a Gemini so far (with hindsight, Raleigh were quite forward-looking as far as the concept of the "hybrid" goes). Looking forward to getting it built up, though - never owned a proper touring bike as such before and the prospect of heading off on a few mini-adventures next summer* is very appealing.

David

*Weather permitting!

Update - hope to get the build finished this weekend, brake blocks* arrived yesterday which were the last items I was waiting on. LGF and raidan73 have very kindly supplied me with some canti brakes (Frogleg design) and a Vetta gel saddle respectively whilst eBay produced a bargain pair of reflective 28mm Schwalbe tyres. All of the other bits will be transferred over from my Quadra II. Photos will be posted as soon as I get round to taking some!

David

*Bright yellow-orange from Fibrax; brakes themselves are black so that particular colour combination is a subtle display of my footballing loyalties. Top of League One at the moment, too!

Looks like the basis for a lovely bike, that. Look forward to seeing more.

The frame as originally turned out at Nottingham would have looked like this:



Surprising the difference a coat of paint can make. I'm wondering if the previous owner was going for a 70s/80s TI team issue style of colour scheme (sort of).

David

Started the build around 2pm on Saturday, including stripping and cleaning the bits off the Quadra (which I'd commuted to work and back on earlier that day!). With a few breaks in between I finished at around 11 at night! Test-rode it for a leisurely 90-minute loop yesterday afternoon and all's well apart from a bit of minor gear slippage and not so minor brake squeal, which is probably due to the blocks needing to be toed-in a bit better. In the end, I had to use the Deore MT62s off my Fort CX bike, as the Frogleg canti set proved to be wide-profile in more than one sense (depth as well as width) and fouled the rear pannier rack. The Froglegs will be donated to the cross bike in return (as it should be, I guess - they are after all largely a CX racer's brake), so setting that up will be my bike project for the next couple of evenings! The CX bike has also had an accidental BB unit upgrade to a spare Hope one, as the Tange BB on the Quadra was in a bad way, but I needed to finish the build in time for this morning's commute so out came the rather superior Tange one fitted to the Fort. Lots of fun & games but the end result looks and rides very well.

Pics to follow later this week....

David

Still been too lazy to photograph it since the build....and I'm now on my 2nd set of brake blocks (this bike gets used a lot)! Also, a longer stem is imminent as the riding position needed a tweak, plus Helmut Berns at Sonic has supplied me with a very nice set of proper touring wheels built around suitably beefy Mach1 rims, so the bike is just getting better and better! Might even chance a photo or two of the Mk.2 incarnation.

David