1970 Raleigh Olympus

The tyres were a lucky eBay find - quite by chance I spotted a real old dog of a Mk2 Olympus, but something about the photos caught my eye. I got the images into Photoshop and zoomed in, which revealed that the tyres were original Raleigh Racing amber walls as fitted to the Mk1 Olympus. Amazingly the tyres still had the original paper label wrapped right around the tread, showing they had been fitted to the bike, pumped up and never ridden. The bike was located in the north of the UK which meant another long trip. I got home, removed the tyres and threw the rest of the bike away. It was a wreck anyway and I didn't actually pay much for it.



Obsessive I know but these have canvas rim tape inside them as well.

It was important to me to keep the original Sturmey Archer rims, and S&T did a good job of keeping the stampings. I had to obtain a replacement rear hub though, as the original TDC freewheel was stuck fast to it and no amount of effort would remove it. This of course meant finding a replacement 14 - 24 TDC freewheel as well, which a mate of mine managed to do for me.

I got hold of a set of NOS Sturmey Archer nipples and galvanised spokes but annoyingly half of them were shot - stained, corroded and generally in a poor state. I tried to find some modern galvanised spokes but no luck there, so somewhat reluctantly I opted for modern stainless spokes in the rebuild. These and the inner tubes are the only non-original things on the bike.

Wheel building was by Graham at Slam 69 in Gloucester. He thinks I have the world's most expensive rims fitted with the world's cheapest spokes.

The brakes were both pretty rusty so I had both sets rechromed. The barrel adjusters and pinch bolts weren't chromed though, they were simply polished as they were never originally chromed anyway.

I managed to get hold of a NOS Huret Svelto rear mech but it had black jockey wheels. It was in need of a service anyway (the grease had solidified) so I set about transferring the red jockey wheels onto it. This involved stripping the wheels down and removing all the tiny bearings from inside them. You can see part of the mech sitting in hot water in a mug where I was trying to loosen the old grease.

The handlebar set is a rare NOS find, as were the pedals. I was originally going to rechrome the pedals but the ends were bashed in. The original handlebars and steerer turned out to be bent over by about an inch. Whoever had that bike in Colwyn Bay must have ridden it into every lamp post in town.

This is how the handlebars arrived.



Original factory fitted bar tape.

This is the original inner boss of the TDC freewheel firmly attached to the hub. This necessitated getting hold of like for like replacements for both.



Ghetto engineering time. This isn't Rod Hull's Emu in a washing machine, it's my way of holding the central boss of the replacement freewheel steady while I undid the lockring. It was devoid of grease so it's had a full rebuild.



The TDC freewheel getting serviced

Finding inner tubes was surprisingly difficult. It's one of those things I'd pretty much given up on until a friend told me he'd found some. I was really keen to preserve as much of the look as possible, and that included the style of the valves. Finding 26 x 1 1/4 tubes was hard enough, but finding some with valves which were of the correct type and importantly threaded steel all the way down was a miracle. Almost all tubes I'd seen until this point were rubber coated brass.

Re:

that's fantastic.

I had one as well as a kid, same colour.

You must be bored now it's finished..... I suggest maybe doing another, just the same.....

Thanks. I was thinking of doing the red one. Only this time I won't even start unless I can locate a set of mudguards first. I have noticed it's very often only the front mudguards that survive... probably the rear ones all got broken from being backed into sheds whereas the front ones were never really exposed to that extent. There's a later first generation red one on eBay at the moment, but being post-1975 it has a cheaper alternative to the All Rounder - and clearly has a bent steerer tube! If it's possible to be a purist for a bike that cost £35 in 1970 then that's what I'm doing!

Thanks to some good clear photos of wrecked - but surviving - bikes on eBay I was able to work out that the saddle I needed was a Lycett L'Avenir. Raleigh also fitted the Olympus with both the Brooks Competition and the Wrights W3N, all of which are similar pebbletop saddles. This one was a lucky find, it just needed the bright zinc plating on the chassis cleaning up with wire wool and autosol.