1977 Raleigh Record LTD Mixte- Campus bike rebuild Part II-nobody said it'd be easy

Well, not everything went wrong...I did get the seat post cleaned up.

a bit rusty

fairly shiny

What the pictures don't show is that I also took apart the clamp, cleaned it up and greased the rails and got it all back together.

I also got the bottom bracket cleaned up and installed.

prepping

Installed minus lock ring

Then things got a bit bumpy.  First issue bottom bracket spindle nuts.  I thought I could just get them at the hardware store...wrong.  I found nuts that were the right size and thread pitch but they were too fat!  no room to get a socket in to turn the bolt.

bigger not better

Issue number two the center pull straddle cable didn't work for the rear brake.  On a mixte the rear brake is a bit funky mounting to a bracket about halfway up the seat tube and needing to go around that tube.  A standard 110 mm straddle cable, I found out doesn't have enough length to do that.

a bit tight

Issue number three was fork steer tube length.  I knew when I ordered the replacement fork that it would be longer than the original and so I also ordered some spacers...just not enough.  I don't have a picture of that, think I was swearing, but imagine the top nut and then a space of threads and then the top spacer.

Issue number four was also fork related-crown race size.  As I mentioned in Part I, a new headset got ordered when I ordered the fork.  Now as you may know for most 10 speed forks there are two sizes of fork crown races either 26.4 or 27.0.  I ordered the new headset basing the size on what a 1977 Raleigh would have come with-26.4.  WRONG.  I should have considered the size of the crown race on the new fork I ordered which was of course -27.0.  It occurred to me I had an issue when I was trying to set the crown race and the damn thing wouldn't budge.

Fork packaging with the determining measurement

Nice ordering you git!

And lastly, I hope, issue number five was the front derailleur.  As I pointed out in Part I this bike lacked an FD, and so I went to Bike Works to pick up a used one.  As you may know most bike boom bikes had 28.6 diameter seat tubes while later aluminum bikes came with beefier 34.6 seat tubes.  The FD I picked out was a SunTour and therefore pretty old so no worries about the clamp diameter right?  Yep WRONG when I got it home and dry fitted it I found it was too big.

The good news is I have figured out work arounds for all of those issues which I will get into later, the bad news is I spent so much time sorting them that I had very little time to assemble the dang bike.

coming along...slowly

So rather than spending the weekend assembling the bike and finishing it on Sunday, I spent my time trouble shooting.  Part III is going to be a bit delayed as I am going on vacation next week so sometime after that I will finish the bike (I hope) and this series of posts.

Until then -Ride. Smile.Repeat.