Hope we're okay with the odd Roadster here in the road section! 
The brief for this bike is to re-imagine the traditional 30s and 40s hot rod scene as if the culture had grown around bicycles instead of cars. I wanted to build a bike of that era with modifications that might have evolved from the pursuit of speed or looking fast, just like those traditional hot rod cars of the era.
I picked up this rod brake Raleigh a few years ago as a suitable base for the project. As found:
Apart from the obvious assault with the white paint and lack of saddle, this old girl was complete, local and a bargain.
The frame number revealed it to be a 1936 or 37 Raleigh 27X, like this one:
A pretty high-end machine in its day. The differences I can see are, mine doesn't have a locking front fork and I don't have stainless spokes any more. But otherwise it's fairly original I think.
Quadrant shifter
Operates a 1936 or 37 hub (the year Sturmey decided not to stamp the date into the hub, I can't remember what it says instead).
The best bit for me though is the rod brakes..
...Operating drums..
...Front and rear! As you'd expect these work like ass but they looks great for the end result I have in mind.
So the first job was to strip all that crappy paint off the thing. I ended up just bare-metalling the whole thing, assembled it and rocked it like that for a while.
I picked up a seat:
Not period correct but old enough to get away with it.
Annoyingly I can't find any pictures of it being ridden when it was bare-metalled and put back on the road, the only pics I have of it are from when I dug it out of storage a few weeks ago.
Here's how she's currently sitting.
It came off the road because the bottom bracket has a brass insert as the threaded part of the bottom bracket shell, and this had broken in two, resulting in an eternally loose bottom bracket. This was probably the reason it came off the road in the first place.
I have done some beautifying, like moving the original Lucas headlamp down to a bracket welded to the mudguard. The rear Lucas dynamo set-up was taken off and I just repositioned the Lucas bullet rear light centrally between the rear chainstays.
The Brooks is mounted on an old 'gallows' type seat post that I've turned around to sling the seating position lower and further back.
I also added some red grips from the depths of my LBS, I whitewalled the original tyres myself which worked pretty well.
I decided to tackle the bottom bracket problem so I can get riding this thing again.
I chopped the L/H bottom bracket shell out of my old Elswick Hopper that I was binned off of by a taxi a few years ago completely destroying it, but I saved it for spares.
I took down the outer Elswick shell until it was a friction fit in the old Raleigh frame, then I pressed it in and I will then plug-weld it.
So that's you up to date with it. The next stage is to build a new custom chaincase (the original was stolen from my workshop) and I'm thinking of shot blasting the wheels complete and having them refinished in red. Kinda aiming for the bicycle equivalent of something like this:
Let me know what you think!
The brief for this bike is to re-imagine the traditional 30s and 40s hot rod scene as if the culture had grown around bicycles instead of cars. I wanted to build a bike of that era with modifications that might have evolved from the pursuit of speed or looking fast, just like those traditional hot rod cars of the era.
I picked up this rod brake Raleigh a few years ago as a suitable base for the project. As found:
Apart from the obvious assault with the white paint and lack of saddle, this old girl was complete, local and a bargain.
The frame number revealed it to be a 1936 or 37 Raleigh 27X, like this one:
A pretty high-end machine in its day. The differences I can see are, mine doesn't have a locking front fork and I don't have stainless spokes any more. But otherwise it's fairly original I think.
Quadrant shifter
Operates a 1936 or 37 hub (the year Sturmey decided not to stamp the date into the hub, I can't remember what it says instead).
The best bit for me though is the rod brakes..
...Operating drums..
...Front and rear! As you'd expect these work like ass
but they looks great for the end result I have in mind.So the first job was to strip all that crappy paint off the thing. I ended up just bare-metalling the whole thing, assembled it and rocked it like that for a while.
I picked up a seat:
Not period correct but old enough to get away with it.
Annoyingly I can't find any pictures of it being ridden when it was bare-metalled and put back on the road, the only pics I have of it are from when I dug it out of storage a few weeks ago.
Here's how she's currently sitting.
It came off the road because the bottom bracket has a brass insert as the threaded part of the bottom bracket shell, and this had broken in two, resulting in an eternally loose bottom bracket. This was probably the reason it came off the road in the first place.
I have done some beautifying, like moving the original Lucas headlamp down to a bracket welded to the mudguard. The rear Lucas dynamo set-up was taken off and I just repositioned the Lucas bullet rear light centrally between the rear chainstays.
The Brooks is mounted on an old 'gallows' type seat post that I've turned around to sling the seating position lower and further back.
I also added some red grips from the depths of my LBS, I whitewalled the original tyres myself which worked pretty well.
I decided to tackle the bottom bracket problem so I can get riding this thing again.
I chopped the L/H bottom bracket shell out of my old Elswick Hopper that I was binned off of by a taxi a few years ago completely destroying it, but I saved it for spares.
I took down the outer Elswick shell until it was a friction fit in the old Raleigh frame, then I pressed it in and I will then plug-weld it.
So that's you up to date with it. The next stage is to build a new custom chaincase (the original was stolen from my workshop) and I'm thinking of shot blasting the wheels complete and having them refinished in red. Kinda aiming for the bicycle equivalent of something like this:
Let me know what you think!
