Reynolds 531sl or 531???

[Mr Weirdo]

Yeah there's a link to Raleigh. Radiation cookers was bought out by Ti Tube Investments in 1967 and the Radiation name was dropped, not a good selling point having Radiation in the home during a cold warand became New World cookers the name Radiation gave their range of cookers probably because of the American styling. The Chairman and Managing Director of Ti Raleigh from 1974-81 Ian Phillips was previously a Managing Director at New World as his Cambridge degree was in heating engineering and was offered the position at Raleigh in 74 moving his family up north to the Nottingham area. Anyway cut a long story I've ended up with Ian Phillips bike

https://www.retrobike.co.uk/threads/raleigh-sbdu-753-dynaflite-manager-special.437747/[/URL

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Yeah there's a link to Raleigh. Radiation cookers was bought out by Ti Tube Investments in 1967 and the Radiation name was dropped, not a good selling point having Radiation in the home during a cold warand became New World cookers the name Radiation gave their range of cookers probably because of the American styling. The Chairman and Managing Director of Ti Raleigh from 1974-81 Ian Phillips was previously a Managing Director at New World as his Cambridge degree was in heating engineering and was offered the position at Raleigh in 74 moving his family up north to the Nottingham area. Anyway cut a long story I've ended up with Ian Phillips bike

Raleigh Dynaflite SBDU 753.... 'Manager Special'

A Raleigh SBDU frame popped up on eBay last week and caught my attention. It was listed as an SBDU Dynaflite frame and fork only though a Campagnolo chainset and Super Record headset were included. What really intrigued me was the final photo on the listing showing it built as a complete bike...

www.retrobike.co.uk

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It's a small world, was it by coincidence or are you a Raleigh man through and through. I would love an SBDU frame. How do you find riding a Reynolds 753 frame? Would you say SBDU built some of the best frames in the UK? Or there are equally good frames made by others out there? Just wondered...

 

[gfk_velo]

Very nice...don't know much if anything at all about Pennine but I'm sure I've seen them on eBay and FB market place. Soo many frames so little time. I like Denton's and Fred James to. I need a decent set of scales and your Salter ones, another old brand name I like the look of lol.

Pennine - very well known and respected builders from Bradford.

Originally known as Whittaker & Mapplebeck - the current owners, Sandra and Paul Corcoran bought the business a couple of decades ago (at least) - Paul had been managing the business for some years.

They still have frames bearing the Pennine name, in steel and AFAIK they are still building in-house.

In decades gone past, Johnny Whittaker and Geoff Whittaker built a lot of frames, so many that are marked for other shops - some Ken Russells, for instance - actually came out of their frame shop.

 

[gfk_velo]

As you mentioned that your frame is French thought I'd dig out my top of the range 1978 Gitane Olympic Record in 531db size 21inch weighing in at a whooping 2080g. Think that the tube gauge was different for the French market, takes a 26.4mm seat post

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Weight variations can be huge ... the differences between lugs and BB shells can be considerable & not all frames with a decal on the seat tube are neccessaily made entirely from that tubing. It's a bit of an in-joke in framebuilding circles that a frame decal might apply to the tube it's on but what the rest of the frame is made of is very hard to determine once it's built and it's got paint on it!

Some tubes, you can be pretty definitive about - Columbus Air or Max for example, because of the shaping, SLX, TSX and so on - OK, you can feel the rifle-stsyle helical butting inside the tube - but with single and double butted tubing sets, it's very hard to tell. Some info can come from tubing diameters / shapes on the chainstays, seatstays, fork blades but it's notoriously hard to know.

I've just built a frame for me in Reynolds 631 - except that it's not *all* 631 because the 631 tube-set uses some 831 tubes plus, the downtube is 831 because Reynolds didn't have 631 in the size required at the time I ordered the tubes. That's not so uncommon and it was often the case, even when steel was virtually the only framebuilding material, that other tubes were substituted in.

Even paint makes a difference - if we are talking a wet paint like enamel, a frame can have anything between 60 & 150g of paint on it, according to finish & complexity of finish. For powder coats (more recent, true), you can double that. Chrome makes a big difference, too.

 

[Midlife]

Raleigh used a special lightweight paint for their hour record bike...... Also appeared on some of their SBDU TT frames allegedly.

Was a gold coloured lacquer. If you looked carefully you could just about see through it. Didn't help Schuiten though

 

[Mr Weirdo]

Raleigh used a special lightweight paint for their hour record bike...... Also appeared on some of their SBDU TT frames allegedly.

Was a gold coloured lacquer. If you looked carefully you could just about see through it. Didn't help Schuiten though

It didn't do Shirley Easton in Goldfinger much good either