1991 Raleigh Scorpio!

I've never owned or ridden a road bike before but that changed last weekend.
Some members of my women basketball team convinced me that it would be a good idea to take part in a team triathlon next summer. As i would drown in a second in the water and my knees voted against running i said i'm in as long as my part was riding a bike.
Last week i came across this Raleigh Scorpio reading my local newspaper.
I bought some old bikes before but this one is the king of grime.

It took me 2 evenings cleaning the wheels only.
The tires were both completely perished. The hubs made unpleasant noises and the skewers were rusted badly.
So i took the hubs apart cleaned and regreased them. Front is a Sachs Maillard, rear is a Shimano FH-RM50. Both laced to Alesa 317 alloy rims. The rear now runs smooth again and the front is at least better than before.
I tried to clean the cassette for about 1 hour untill i recognised that there are three screws under that grime to completely take this thing apart. It is a Shimano UG 6-speed cassette evenly spaced at 24-22-20-18-16-14. Here the grime has had its good side and conserved the cassette well. I thought the Sachs Maillard skewers were far too rusted to save them but a overnight bath in white spirit and 10 minutes with a scratch brush made them shiney again.

I ordered new Schwalbe Lugano Active 700x23C. The old ones strangely had different sizes. Front was 20C and the rear 25C.
They arrived today and after i tested the old Schwalbe tubes i put all the stuff together again.
Together with the tires i ordered some new white bare tape but before that will be attached i will have to made up my mind if i keep the wobbly Weinmann brake levers. In the mean time i'm on the lookout for some new neon yellow shift/brake cable housing.

I know this bike here is the lowest low end bike around but i think i'm only true to myself here as i'm no road racer at all. I'm a mountain man and i'm not ready for the lycra shorts and all that...yet.

Excuse the first lousy pic..i was so exited that i couldn't hold the phone still. :facepalm:




Perished old tires:



Cleaned and serviced wheelset:

Re: 1991 Raleigh Scorpio

Don't diss the old Raleigh bottom feeder models! You'll be surprised who you can beat on these and you'll be surprised how angry people can get when you pass them on one

I've got 6-speed Uniglide with indexed shifters on my geared bike. It's a nice system, but sadly it's long obsolete and parts are getting hard to come by and expensive when they do pop up. I've been nursing mine for some time now but it does seem to go on and on. If any of the gears jump, the advantage is you can turn the individual cog round the other way and get a new lease of life out of it.

You should be able to find some NOS brake levers or new copies for not too much, like under £10. Ebay is great for stuff like that.

Re: 1991 Raleigh Scorpio

@Jonny69: I would never be dissing a Raleigh. And this particular one i really do like. I can't help it neon yellow is just right colour for me and of course i'm only in for the win on this team triathlon.
I read that advice of putting them cogs on backwards to get more life out of the cassette before on the Sheldon Brown website but i totally forgot about it again. Thanks for the useful reminder. By the way what chain do you personally use with that cassette? I'm not very keen on cleaning the one that came with the bike. I've done that before and i promised myself to not necessarily do it again in my living room nor the man cave. Shimano CN -UG51 chains are widely available and seem to be the only Uniglide choice but if i remember correctly most of the 7-8-speed HG chains are UG compatible but i haven't meassured the space between the cogs to verify that.
As far as the brake levers are concerned i think i will put on some Shimano 600 ones because my father in law donated me a whole shoe box full of his old road stuff. I have no clue what else is in there. I will check that over the weekend.

Re: 1991 Raleigh Scorpio

Those handlebars are... umm. Not good? You will be faster and more comfortable if you take the black thing off.

Even if you lowered the stem to put the black thing at the right height, you won't go fast enough for it to help. Set up like that, you will be slower. Sorry.

It's okay to get you used to road cycling. But I wouldn't spend any money on doing it up, the first part to upgrade would be the everything.

Re: 1991 Raleigh Scorpio

@Bats: You are right about the tri-bar. I don't think the bike was set up with any purpose in mind to be honest. The previous owner told me it was gift to him in his youth and he never rode it in the past 15 years.
I don't think it will get me used to road cycling. It will get me to finish this one race and if i should win maybe it will be allowed to stay next to some other neon yellow bikes.
Some brake and shifter cables won't break the bank. And as i said before i guess i got a shoe box full of stuff to "upgrade" this Scorpio. I don't even think there is much that really needs to be upgraded because besides the brake levers nothing is broken but on the other hand it is too much fun not to do it.

Re: 1991 Raleigh Scorpio

Loose those bars and then add New tyres, saddle and a good clean over and service and it will be a nice looking, useful machine!

Re: 1991 Raleigh Scorpio

A little bit of progress today.
I found some working Francesco Moser brake levers in one of my spare boxes.
Cleaning the Raleigh bar was no fun at all. In the end white spirit did the trick and got rid of the glue from the old bar tape. The bar is the original one from february 1991. I think the logos on the shim should be readable from the front but they are underneath the bar. Is this a common thing on all Raleigh bars or is this shim really moveable? I tried but it doesn't look like this thing wants to move in any direction.

I don't think you can move that bit.

Hey the wheelset looks great and the bike is coming together nicely,I loved these bikes as a kid,living in Nottingham most bikes were Raleigh or Carlton,BSA or Sun, ,and a 10/12 speed racer was the bike to have.
I really hope you like it when you get it all back together,my generation also had Choppers and Grifters,compared to these the Racer had speed and grace.
Thanks for the nice comments about my bike on my thread,and looking forward to seeing your bike up and running!

Found some time to go on with the Scorpio.
I cleaned and regreased the Tange headset so now the bike can be ridden in any direction and not only straight ahead. The old grease was solid chewing gum.
Fitted some white Ritchey cork bar tape cause i couldn't find any neon yellow one but i'm very pleased with the way it looks and feels. It was my first bar tape i ever fitted but nonetheless it went pretty straight forward after watching some Youtube videos on how to do that.
I got new white cable housings after buying two different yellow ones that were described as citron yellow but neither one were kind of neon. If you know were to get some real neon yellow cables please let me know. I know they must be out there...
The bike now also got a Shimano 600 tricolour rear mech and a matching crank set as well.
Not sure i want to use the Shimano PD-6401 pedals that are now attached to the bike since i'm used to riding clips but for now they look fine since they are white.
I wanted to fit some F.Moser AER brakes to the bike which were used together with my Moser brake levers but for some reason which i'm unable to figure out i couldn't get the brake blocks in a position in which they wouldn't destroy the tire.
I had another pair of brakes to try, some older Shimano 600 ones but with them it was the same problem.
So after fiddling an hour or two with this problems i decided to clean the Shimano Exage Action brakes and put them back on. The brake blocks are new and i guess that's the most important thing about the brakes but if there is anyone who can shed some light on this please don't hesitate. This is my first road bike so i really have no clue what this is about..maybe these brakes are for different wheel sizes?

After that i got rid of all the unnecessary Castrol and Uncle Sam stickers and cleaned the frame as good as i could.

The things left to do are getting a white Turbo saddle..since the original Raleigh one won't fit my behind...
Sourcing a clamp for my tricolour front mech and maybe get a new seat post will be up next. I'm thinking of an anodised purple one or maybe a white one..what do you think? And finally i will need a new 6 speed compatible chain. Any ideas?
Google came up with a Shimano CN-UG51 and a KMC Z50. Should i give one of these a try or are there any obvious choices i'm too dumb to find?