boy"O"boy's 1991 Raleigh Dynatech Endeavour

Hi all.

Thought I'd get round to starting a thread for this one.

Was briefly shown here -

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=91636&start=1210

.....just after I'd taken delivery from an eBay impulse buy. The previous owner said he'd got it from a Raleigh employee. He'd stripped the Campagnolo from it for his own touring bike. The Campagnolo 'bullet' shifters also came as part of the package.
The Chainstay join on the drive side looks slightly suspect - more like a piece of the Aluminium casting has come off. As this will be (like most of my retro ) a low use build, I'm looking down the lines of a resin repair. The headtube paint has some 'bubbles' in it. The aim would be a very sympathetic respray of those areas keeping the originality of everything else in tact.

The main lure of purchasing this one must be that I've never seen another on here.
Top of the tree on the Dynatech Line -up in 1991.....from the appreciation thread - it went in this order

SENTINEL
ENCOUNTER
MISSION
ODYSSEY
VOYAGER
ENDEAVOUR

The brochure picture with it's neon Flexstem is a massive sell for me too.

Anyway. Here's some start off pics.

I'll and my research and scans as I go through. Enjoy.

boy"O"boy

Initial research from June 1991 MBi.... Advertisment and inside cover feature, showing it underwater

....and the Dynatech Endeavour test from MBi magazine....

MBi Oct 1991

Interestingly, the final conclusions in the write up suggest avoiding this bike and going for the Odyssey instead!

This may account for why there are not many around!? .....and at £1,395 too!

Sourcing the Campagnolo is not going to be easy (or Cheap!) but I'm nearly there after a year. There's a few pieces to go.....8 spd Cassette/Centaur pedals

MatBH5 kindly sold me these Centaur cranks. ( ....and several other essentials! - Thanks Mat!)

I'll add a few more pics once I've cleaned them, but here's some start off pics.

Cheers.
boy"O"boy

More please...

Now there’s a coincidence!
I haven’t done anything since starting a thread for this build, apart from collecting parts. Last night I removed the forks/headset/heron in preparation for a resin repair for the chainstay and removal of the ‘bubbling’ on the head tube. The chainstays and headtube casting are then going to be sympathetically resprayed keeping as much of the original colour as possible.
It’s almost like you could see what I was up to an restarted the thread. Spooky

I’ve literally just masked up the tubes this morning and a repair expert is working on it now. I’ll add some pictures in a bit!

.....but then you knew that already right?

More to come very soon.

boy"O”boy

Nice one!

You left your curtains open a bit, that was all

Hi all.

As promised, here's a small update.

The resin repair to the chain stay is complete and currently in Primer. Next stop is to get a paint match on the Metallic chain stay and head tube colour. The existing paint has badly bubbled around some of the head tube, so I want to get a good colour match before taking this back to metal. Most likely I'll have to strip the whole head tube casting as the paint seems rather thick and I don't want to patch what I remove with filler.

Here's 2 pics of progress.

Cheers.
boy"O"boy

Hi all.

So enforced time off has its upsides. Suspecting that a lockdown could be imminent, I brought the Dynatech back from work in readiness to repaint and build. The weather is good, the kids are playing (and not fighting yet!) and I have the momentum to get this done.

So ......Day 1

Whilst at work, I was able to use the colour swatches in the paint shop to get a near identical match to the magenta coloured areas that will need repainting.

Ford 'Blush' metallic

From here, the head tube casting was stripped back to bare aluminium to remove the bubbled paint. The original paint could be considered a 'generous' coat as it took an age to get off. I didn't want to apply heat due to the bonding processes used, so it was hand stripped using course to fine papers and a razor blade. If modern Nitromors weren't so rubbish, paint stripper would have been ideal for this.....
Still job done.

There was also 'bubbling' on the drive side chainstay and around the wishbone, so these were rubbed back to remove any corrosion and coated with a high build primer.

Today's work was getting the head tube in primer and rubbing back in between coats to get a good blend between the repairs and original paint.

If the weather is good tomorrow- we'll be going into colour as the paint arrived today.

Here's some pics of today's progress.

Cheers all.
boy"O"boy

.......and into primer.

Now ready for it's colour. Original tube colour and 'Endeavour' decals protected under masked areas.

More updates soon.....