This week I added a couple new bikes to the fleet. The first one is a 1974 Raleigh Sports in bronze green color. It’s in pretty good shape for its age, but I plan to give it a big refresh.
A friend of mine found an old Hercules in a dumpster that he has been fixing up and after seeing it decided I should get one of these English three speed bikes. I’d never realized all the shifting was in the hub on these, which is really neat. Also just look at all the beautiful details on these bikes:
Check out the Raleigh heron in the crank, now that is cool. Only thing I have done so far is fix the shift cable. The cable stop was broken and it was off the pulley, so it was just hanging loose. Fixed easy and seems to shift ok.
These are the all-steel bike, frame, rims, bars, fenders… This same basic bike design was made for decades. This one has the AMF bike lights powered by the generator on the wheel, not sure if they work. The old school reflectors are kinda vintage neat in the spokes. Can also see the remnants of an odometer on the front wheel. I think much of this is going to come off in my refresh, but I’ll keep everything. There is some extra bracket that was for who knows what on the handlebars. I think the bike is too pretty to have all the extra stuff on it. The first phase of the refresh is just going to be some cleaning and getting it rideable. The tires are currently shot, but I have some new Kenda tires. Lots of the chrome steel needs a good cleaning up, and I think I’ll need to find a better saddle…
Here is a pic after some cleaning up, have a nice Brooks saddle on it now, made in England.
The second bike is a ladies Raleigh Sports, I’ll post some images of that one soon.
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