This Raleigh, however, was nowhere near complete- its wheelset had vanished into the ether a long time ago, someone had filched the brake levers and seat, and the seat post was all but frozen in place. It did however sport a nice set of original fenders which had somehow escaped destruction, and the original stem-mounted Suntour friction shifters which unsurprisingly still worked perfectly. (I love old Suntour shifters, for the record). Someone had replaced the shifter cables at some point, likely before giving up on the restoration project and dumping it in front of the bike shop, but the rear derailleur was a sad, bent-caged piece with no hope of repair.
Primarily due to the lack of a wheelset, the bike had been busily occupying space in the shop for at least two years (I don't keep records of every junk bike we have lying around, but I remember this bike being around for at least that long). At first I entertained hopes that some enterprising student would spy the bike, spring for the cost of a decent 700c wheelset, and get the thing fixed up. A couple of people talked about doing something with it, but never followed through. So the bike languished, first inside the shop, then when we ran out of room, outside of the shop with the rest of the "end of the line" bikes. Typically anything remotely nice that's left outside for longer than a few days vanishes,but this bike lasted a good three months and no one touched the thing.
Saving grace arrived in an unlikely way: with the death of my Jamis Aurora, shown above on its last visit to the bike stand. A small crack, likely due to a faulty weld, had developed in the seat tube/seat stay junction, dooming the bike to a warranty replacement. Jamis handled the warranty quite well, so well that they sent me an Aurora Elite frame as a replacement. The Aurora Elite is a great frame, but its a disc specific frame, meaning it needed a new wheelset in order for me to complete the build. I was willing to upgrade the wheelset, something I'd been considering doing anyway prior to departing for Colorado this Summer, but in the interim I needed a bike other than my mountain bike for running errands and riding around town. The need for another utility bike was further highlighted by the discovery that the Aurora Elite would not be able to haul my custom cargo trailer due to its disc brakes and dropout configuration.
Enter the Raleigh: Solid steel frame, good headset bearings, only lacking a wheelset, a new drive train, and controls. Everything except the wheelset was already available from our spare parts bins, and the old Aurora wheelset fit nicely on the Raleigh, though I did have to file the front dropouts open in order to fit the 9mm axle inside.
Next I had to deal with the seized drive-side bottom bracket cup- I filed away the paint (who paints bottom brackets? Raleigh, apparently) and crud to ensure maximum grip, then clamped the bottom bracket in the bench vise in lieu of using a wrench. I've found that this method almost entirely eliminates problems with stripping on these bottom bracket types.
Once I removed the bottom bracket, I discovered that the threading for the BB shells was very shallow indeed- half of what looks like threading in the above picture is only about half threaded and partially painted over. As I didn't have any way to re-thread the thing, this led to an hour long bottom bracket insertion job wherein I carefully screwed in the cartridge BB I used as a replacement 1/8 a turn at a time with the BB remover clamped in the jaws of the bench vise. Its well greased, but I still pity whoever tries to remove that bottom bracket.
Once the BB was installed, the rest of the job went pretty quickly. A slightly used 8 speed cassette and a Shimano SIS rear derailleur of unknown vintage were located and installed, along with the old Aurora wheelset. I found a couple of old MTB cantilever brake levers, which provided about the right pull ratio for the caliper brakes, and an old MTB crankset with an unusable small chainring. Brake pads were pulled from a donated box of used parts, and one of my old MTB seats was thrown on the seatpost using a clamp stolen from a junked bike's seat. The chain came out of the spare chain bin. It looked pretty rough, but I was surprised to find that it was relatively unworn when I measured it, so I cleaned it up and threw it on.
Once new brake cables were installed, everything was tightened up, and my lights were installed, the bike was ready for a test ride. It was great! The handling is a little off compared to what I'm used to, probably because of the short stem and swept back bars, but the upright riding position is really comfortable and doesn't feel too inefficient when underway. The bike was almost entirely silent even when really cranking on the pedals, so I suppose my force-threading of the bottom bracket turned out okay.
Tomorrow I'll probably install my rack, and then its off for downtown at the next opportunity!
