1983 Raleigh Record Rebuild...?

Almost exactly a year ago today I found this forlorn incomplete bike on the side of the road while seeking french toast on Mothers Day.  I pulled it out of the bone yard for an assessment today.  I have this half formed idea that maybe I could get it up and running by next Monday so I can use it to ride back and forth to the Mariners game I have tickets for.  It would kill two birds with one stone; 1) get a bike up and running that I can sell and 2) have a bike to ride to the ball game that if, worst case scenario, it got stolen then I wouldn't be out much.

My goal for this build is to have what one of the blogs I followed early in my refurb journey (MyTenSpeeds) refers to as a "Junk Bike", essential a bike that looks like junk but is mechanically sound.  Good for say riding in winter or when you want to ride downtown and want to lock up your bike without worrying about attracting thieves, especially effective it you park it next to something nice.   I would really like to spend as little as possible doing this and to that end I have a number of parts on hand I can use; cables, chain, etc.

front brake

rear brake

I may break out the wallet to buy some oxalic acid and gloves for the rusty parts, I have heard good things about how it deals with rust and want to try it out.  I am not concerned with shining parts up but I don't want them so rusty they don't work either.

replacement front wheel

Tri-Cross tires

This bike came with no front wheel but I have one left over from a previous build, where I went with new wheels, I can use.  I am going to go with the lightly used Specialized Tri-Cross tires that came with the Schwinn Passage and its tubes too.

Passage original cockpit

funky stem

Speaking of the Passage I am also going to use its cockpit, I think if I am careful I can also use the bar tape after unwrapping to run brake cables.  Then I don't have to deal with safety levers and I think that the funky triangular Raleigh branded stem might be worth something on Ebay.

Clunky replacement binder

This bike wasn't left out for free by accident, in addition to no front wheel the seat post binder was replaced by hardware store parts, and the seat -post itself popped right out when I got this bike.  I have a real binder bolt around somewhere that I am hoping will solve this -if I can find it!- so we'll see.

Rusty FW and barely hanging on RD

The rear derailleur isn't connected correctly to the frame because its missing parts but I think I can over come that, the Free-Wheel is pretty rusty so if I can't get that cleaned up I may use something from the boneyard

Boneyard FW

or something new in the box that has been in the parts bin forever- pictured above in box with the collection of parts - a 6 speed Mega range FW.

I won't be worried about waxing the frame -its primer- or shining up parts but I will be rebuilding all the bearings, except for the front wheel which has already been done.  I may also use a old sealed shimano square taper bb I have rattling around rather than rebuild the existing bb.  I will also be running new cables, lubing up the drive train and replacing brake pads and probably adding the Vetta rear rack I got off the Gitane that wouldn't work on the Passage.

One thing I am not prepared to do with this bike is deal with a bunch of obstacles beyond the ones that I have already discussed.  I won't be asking much for this bike so I don't want to spend alot of extra time and if things go south there are plenty of parts I can pick to use it as a donor rather than try to build a complete bike out of it.  That's my story for now anyway.  Ride.Smile.Recycle.Repeat.

PS  (about an hour later) I got bored...

I was just going to do a few easy things....I do still have to remove the fix bb cup, and the headset cups, but otherwise its stripped down.  I ran into a few issues, which I'll go into in the next post, but I got it all apart.  That is all.  I think.