Raleigh 501 Club

Evening all...been pottering around with my father's Raleigh 501 Club and thought it might be time for a picture:



This was the bottom of the 'lightweight' range (circa 1990). Reynolds 501 main tubes, Gipeme (spelling?) dropouts, gas pipe forks and stays - much like a Kellogs Tour, Elan, etc. I suppose? It was sold as a training frame, hence the name.

My father's Raleigh Pursuit snapped its drive side chain stay - they all went that way! - and at the time I worked in a 'five star' Raleigh Dealership which meant we dealt with all the warranty jobs. Raleigh had just entered the Dyna Tech phase and were selling off all these lightweight steel frames in big and small sizes for a bargain price. Rather than get another Pursuit frame or similar, I think we paid an extra £30 and got this instead. Been in constant (light) use ever since. All in all a bit of a timewarp! Does anyone else have bikes/frames of this era and type?

I think I have a similar one in the garage (the frame) ......I bought it to spray up in the old Ti colours but never got round to it LOL. There's a brochure in the section on scans here. Raleigh kept the geometry quite tight even on the frames with mudguard eyes (training) so they rode well

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Ah........5 star raleigh dealership

Shaun

You're right, even though its a 25 1/4" frame, the top tube is somewhat shorter than my Peugeot's of this era - had to fit a rather long 125mm stem to get the position correct. Thanks for the link!

I like it. Frame size and stem are all in proportion. What tyre is under the saddle?

I always wanted to get the whole range of bikes from a producer and ride them one after the other. As a (very!) average rider I wonder if I could detect the differences in ride quality?