Raleigh Special Products 853 'cross.

berniethebike

Dirt Disciple
Just got hold of this - Ultegra / LX / 105 9sp - 853 RSP 'cross bike.
Reputedly used to belong to Barrie Clarke as his team bike (or one of them).
Any ideas as to the age of it - I'm thinking 1998-2001?
HELP!
Cheers

Bernie

853cross.jpg
 
bikemeister2000":3ocve0ih said:
Earliest would be late 1999. It was first featured in the "Emma" brochure.

Looks great :)

Quite a narrow window for its production, then; I worked in a Raleigh dealer in late 2000 at around the time that the Special Products division was being wound down in favour of some very dull Diamondback-branded road stuff. Sadly, despite a few phone enquiries to Nottingham, I failed to get a recently-discontinued flagship R800 titanium frame [1] on the cheap as there were none left in my size :(

David

[1] From memory, red and white with a Mizuno carbon fork. Nice piece of kit.
 
David B":12mxmtd0 said:
bikemeister2000":12mxmtd0 said:
Earliest would be late 1999. It was first featured in the "Emma" brochure.

Looks great :)

Quite a narrow window for its production, then; I worked in a Raleigh dealer in late 2000 at around the time that the Special Products division was being wound down in favour of some very dull Diamondback-branded road stuff. Sadly, despite a few phone enquiries to Nottingham, I failed to get a recently-discontinued flagship R800 titanium frame [1] on the cheap as there were none left in my size :(

David

[1] From memory, red and white with a Mizuno carbon fork. Nice piece of kit.

We only built about 30 or so of the cross frame in small batches of 5.
The road bikes were a continuation of the polished and bead blasted ones. I had mine painted as a DHO in red/black with the Mizuno carbon fork. I used a sample Ultegra Flightdeck groupset I got from Shimano, and had Glen Coltman build me up a pair of wheels using the Ultegra hubs on some red Mavics, with the front radial spoked to look like Heliums.

Check out my picture.

:)

and yeah, the Daimondback stuff was no comparison :D
 
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