Monday, September 1, 2014

1977 Raleigh Record LTD Mixte- Campus bike rebuild Part IV- Finished!

Well after what seems like way too long I finally got my Nieces' campus bike finished.  And I am glad to report that after all the trouble shooting I did yesterday that the running of cables and dialing in of brakes and shifting when pretty smoothly.
routing cables with basket
close up of the rear straddle cable "Racer" Hack
rear brake hooked up

 I am very pleased to be able to complete this bike so my Niece can get it down to Corvallis with her this week.  The good news is that we both have the same car -late 90s/early 2000s Honda civic 4 doors and I was able to get the bike in mine so it should work in hers.  The catch is I needed to do things like remove the basket, front wheel (naturally) and loosen up the stem to get it to fit so I will be giving her a crash course in reassembly before she leaves.

I am hopeful this bike will be useful and reliable transport for her while she is in grad school.  And it will be nice to know a bike I built is tooling around my old stomping grounds.




I hope the finished product was worth the wait for those of you who have been following this series on the Campus bike.  As always ride.smile.repeat.

7 comments:

  1. My goodness. This is now a beautiful bike. Your Niece is very lucky to have ol' Uncle Ryan to get this going for her. I know you have been using the wicker baskets for some of your builds and that the chicks love them, but I really like the clean look of the wire basket. The little nicks in the paint certainly give this bike the proper, as Grant Petersen would say, beausage.
    Great job as always

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    1. Thank you Jim, I thought she would want a wicker basket as well but she has a leather carry all that looks like something you'd see in London in the 1920's and she wanted a wire basket to carry it with. I really like the utilitarian lines of the Wald basket and it was very easy to install. I agree this bike has beausage by the bucketful.

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  2. What a brilliant redo for your niece. I'm sure she'll love it. Provide her with a good lock and show her how to use it.

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  3. Thanks Annie I am happy with the way it turned out -I left the lock buying to her but strongly recommended a u-lock and cable combo.

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  4. I bought the Wald rack and kickstand for Little Miss and have been thinking about the basket (is that the 139?) and if I did I would cut down the top half (per GP) but man! It seems like she is getting heavier and heavier (which of course, she is) and all of this has stalled the project...she was to be a grocery/S24O bike and I am doing all the right things but I cannot shake the feeling that I am betraying my Tiny Dancer...all this anthropomorphization can be a drag sometimes...

    Whatever. The Origen 8 riser stem I bought was too big and was supposed to go with the bad-ass Origen 8 Gary bars I bought...so now all I can find is a STEEL riser that will work just fine except it is STEEL and not shiny black and my head hurts just thinking about it.

    I'm even getting self-conscious about the three coats of paint and four coats of clear and I don't know what to do. Last week I said to hell with it and started the re-assembly and she looks pretty good. I will probably go ahead and reuse the venerable laprade stem and the original bars. I'm not going to scratch up that shiny Gary...somehow it is all depressing as hell and there may be a bicycle box with a bunch of parts and so on on your porch soon.

    I was looking at that Ridley in this months Bicycling and it is only $17,000 and that may be the way to go. We'll see.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by TPC, sorry your project is hitting some road blocks, boy can I relate to that! Hope to see some pics of LMD on you blog soon. I'll have to check out that Ridley -does it come with a mechanic at that price?

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