Raleigh Special Products Division Titanium - INFO PLEASE

Hi

I have just acquired a Titanium Raleigh road bike frame from their Special Products Division built sometime in the mid 90s (I think) and am hoping that the Retrobike community can tell me a bit more about it????

Please see photos below.

Apart from the Chris King headset (which will be changed) the frame has never had any other parts/components fitted and it came with the carbon fibre Look forks.

The serial number stamped into the BB reads K23128.

In the underside of the downtube, very close to the BB, the name CLARK has been carefully scratched onto the frame (looks like a letter stencil has been used). Could this be the name of the frame builder?

All words or wisdom would be greatly appreciated!

Photos...

I think the Titanium frames were all made in Russia, but got RSP decals as a marketing message.

Re:

That is a really lovely frame and in fastastic condition. It looks box fresh!
I can tell you a little about the material used to make the frame and who made it.
Raleigh still carried a lot of clout when they moved into full titanium manufacturing and were able to approach a top titanium fabrication company, in this case IMI, which stands for Imperial Metal Industries which are based in Birmingham, England. The clout Raleigh had was such that they were able to not only specify the tubing profiles (as can be seen with the down tube) but were also able to fine tune the actual alloy used rather than being forced to use the bog-standard 3-2.5 that other frame makers have to use. It's arguable that this is the finest titanium tube-set ever made for a bicycle and it is unlikely that another bike company will be large enough to be able to fully engage a titanium fabricator to develop something similar in the future.
What I can't tell you though is who welded the tubes (IMI or Raleigh) and whether this was carried out in Birmingham or Nottingham. As this was very much a money-no-object enterprise it would have been where the best work could have been carried out.
I sometimes wonder if Reynolds had a hand in the design of the tubing as the frameset bears a strong resemblance to bespoke R853 tubesets released to specialist builders of the time.

Always stand to be corrected in any details though

Re:

Thanks Cavalier...interesting stuff!

As you probably see from the photos the top tube is also a very unusual shape and hard to describe in words!

Superb frame and a brilliant insight into its origins/history from Cavalier!

Could this have been built for Barrie Clark I wonder? :? It'd have a lot more provenance if so!

What are your plans for it Chris?

Wow, thanks for that. I hadn't realised they were that exotic. I had always been told they were Russian and/or Sandvik build.

Here's a picture of a Cougar (either Terry Dolan or Paul Donohue made) using the Reynolds 853 tubeset I was referring to. It has a number of similarities including the shaped top tube that Haylock has pointed out. Reynolds were taking the highest tensile steel they could to the extremes of shaping and butting to produce the lightest frames. It's likely, given the relationship between Raleigh and Reynolds, that this effort was also fed into the IMI tubeset.

Saying that I'm still waiting for someone to post a picture of their uncle Petrov making this frame in an old rusty Soviet submarine factory

regan_ev":39br2r30 said:

Superb frame and a brilliant insight into its origins/history from Cavalier!

Could this have been built for Barrie Clark I wonder? :? It'd have a lot more provenance if so!

What are your plans for it Chris?

Click to expand...

Well its definitely a frame which deserves to be used so will be building it up sometime during the coming months and hopefully enjoying it over the summer.

Aiming for a sub 8kg bike which I think should be achievable!

Cavalier":3b8ioduw said:

... I'm still waiting for someone to post a picture of their uncle Petrov making this frame in an old rusty Soviet submarine factory

Click to expand...

This is a great thread! What are your thoughts on my theory of it being built for Barrie Clark, as a training bike perhaps?

Sounds good Chris. I'm not into road bikes but this one has me very interested in seeing its build progress.

Interesting to see that photo Cavalier. Some obvious similarities there!