The faded Caramel beast......'82 Raleigh Gran Sport

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Peachy!":1flqipq5 said:

sherlylock":1flqipq5 said:

One other issue to sort - bent dropout screw. Managed to tweak it straight enough to wind it out. Assume these are still available to buy new....

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Plenty on eBay

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/331344784825

Excellent work on that post...

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Cheers Chris, the turd has indeed polished up well.

I'll have a measure up of the dropout screw and get some ordered - thanks for the link.

Got the freewheel off the hub and separated out the individual cogs by mounting on a block of wood and using the chainwhip. Unsurprisingly these first 2 cogs are f'in tight.......but they eventually let go, just before I herniated something......



Unfortunately I'm missing a few teeth on a couple of cogs. I have a spare Suntour Ultra 6 freewheel in the spares box but this is missing a few teeth too. I think by combining the two I can get a block that only has one missing tooth.........close but no cigar. I'm guessing these cogs are not available separately anywhere? Quick search on eBay suggests theres a guy in the USA who has a few but for the price of postage I could get a secondhand block in the UK.

Are these blocks prone to teeth breaking off? Seems odd that I have 2x - both with issues.....



Whilst its apart it feels right to strip the freewheel down - it was solid when I bought the bike a quick blast of GT85 got it moving at least. That's justification for a strip down and service in my mind. Managed to get the lockring moving and carefully pulled it apart - capturing the billions* of small ball bearings

*may be an exaggeration.

I've stripped and serviced one of these before and it offers great peace of mind knowing its properly lubricated for future use.

Cleaned up the freewheel components - separated out the pawls and flushed all the muck out. Paid careful attention to the bearing surfaces - cleaned off all the hardened grease and got them looking reasonable. A lot less pitting than first thought!



New 1/8" balls, lithium grease on the bearings and some SAE30 light oil on the pawls.......



All reassembled......buttery smooth and ticks along nicely. Quite therapeutic actually......like an adult fidget-spinner........

Nice work, I get the feeling this will be one very shiny Raleigh once its finished.

I take my hat off to you....chapeau!

I've only ever taken apart a single speed freewheel..... and that was scary enough....

allenh":1cw53kdt said:

Nice work, I get the feeling this will be one very shiny Raleigh once its finished.

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Hoping so.......and hopefully it'll glide along silently with all its balls adequately lubed....... :shock:

Peachy!":1cw53kdt said:

I take my hat off to you....chapeau!

I've only ever taken apart a single speed freewheel..... and that was scary enough....

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I've done one of these before - out of curiosity - so I knew what was in order this time round. It's got an adjustable cone arrangement for adjusting bearing clearances and is fairly simple inside. The locknut was a little stubborn to come undone to start with, and I don't have the correct tool (I've never ever seen the correct tool!) which meant it got a bit of a hammering to get it to shift - which always feels like a nasty way of doing things.

EDIT: - should've realised Sheldon would have some info on the lockring tool. Not sure that would've helped remove a 38 year old crusty lockring though.....



Feels lovely and smoooooooooooth now though. Just need to source a 14T cog (or more likely a complete freewheel) and I'll have it done and ready to re-fit.

Trying to do little bits to this project every night just to keep things ticking along. Turned my attention to the wheels this evening.

I think the Weinmanns and Campag hubs are quite clean and true under the grime but the original "rustless" spokes are now anything but.....



I have a mismatched wheelset (Mavic tubs but mismatched hubs) in the shed from another bike that I split for parts and the spokes on them are the same length (for the front at least) as the Raleigh Weinmanns.....so I stripped the front down to rob it of its stainless butted spokes. Not sure if its a false economy reusing spokes but this wheel came off a bike that had hardly any use - and to be frank I could do with saving as many pennies as possible so I can get the forks re-chromed. The hub is a Suntour unit and the rim is a Mavic GP4 tub - which I'll remount at a later date to a Campag hub I have in the spares box - my plan is to have a set of Mavic tubs on Campag hubs for this bike too....just so I can experience tubs!



Best way to clean a wheel is to strip it right down......right? Well here goes!

I have re-spoked a wheel (one by one) and also rebuilt a front wheel from scratch so this isn't quite as scary as it could be. I'm viewing this exercise as "good practice", and pretty confident it'll go to plan.



Looking forward to cleaning these up and rebuilding........

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Signing up, as I’ve passed over some sprockets and will be good to see if you use them. Great project, I need to catch up on all the work to date!
Edited to say ‘wow’, and do you take commission on knackered Campag seatpost renovation?

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I would keep the spoke tension on the low side. I rebuilt a pair of wheels with those Weinmann concave rims, I rode them for a few journeys, and one day I was sitting looking at the bike, and the rear wheel spontaneously pretzelised itself under no stress whatsoever... apart from the stress of my over-tensioned spokes, of course. I never had that happen with a box-section rim.

The first wheel I did was a rebuild in front of the telly one winters evening, printed copy of Sheldon's instructions on the chair next to me and cup of tea on the table in front of me. Yes its definitely the easiest way to clean an old wheel, the reason I did it and I do it routinely now but keep in mind what @tourqueless said about over tension, everything here is used and may well not be to its original tolerance or strength.

BTW that printed copy of Sheldon's instructions is now bound and very well thumbed.

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Never attempted wheel build. Swapped mine out. Still got them though.