Renewing a Retro Raleigh Royal.

[djnotts]

The 6s ending in a 34 are common enough - Shimano Megarange -but the final jump up is 24 to 34. That seems mechanically clumsy to me and is any case limiting generally "lower" gearing. The 13 -32 is a bit better and I'll count the teeth on the penultimate cog! The IRD with ….24 28 34 surely offers much better, closer, ratios with less massive steps. And 60 quid is OK to make a lovely bike useable. Wheels are 700 not 27" so that is no problem IF I wanted to change them. Again, no need, the rims are perfect. I bought it from a fellow-retrobiker in C'wall - he'd done a few '00 miles on it after buying it from a CTC man who'd ridden it 3 times then hung it up for nearly 30 years.


There's a photo of it on Pictures of My Bike - but I'll try and sort a better one!

Thanks all.

[Alan O]

I did this to a raleigh Royal Lady some 10 years ago for a 6ft women. 2x9 speed, bar end shifters, clamp on downtube cable stop, you can buy modern variants for about £6. Had no problem with fitting a pair of 700C Alexrims from a Specialized bike and the RX100 deep drop dual pivot brakes worked perfectly, I don't think I had to file the slot to get the reach but if I did it wasn't much.
I retained the original compact chainset and Sachs Huret FD and added some single sided Wellgo SPD road pedals.
Yes the brake levers are out in that pic

Nice job there - that's a good looking bike.

[Brucey]

FWIW if you are actually planning on riding this bike very much, I would think twice about fitting a huge (screw on freewheel) sprocket on it. The reason is that the axles on hubs that accept screw-on freewheels tend to break anyway and the kind of use the necessitates low gears just accelerates this kind of failure. You would be much, much better off fitting a cassette hub. £60 buys a good 7s freehub and a set of decent sprockets to go on it. If you have 6s indexing and you want to keep it, you can respace 7s or 8s sprockets to give the cassette you need.

Alternatively modify the rear hub to include an outrigger bearing that helps to support the freewheel and gives the axle a much easier time of it.

cheers

[djnotts]

I understand what you say, Brucey, but no I shan't be riding very much at all, ever, given my recent cancer diagnosis. If it gets 500 miles on the clock I'll be very lucky. Simply want to ride as long as I can on a bike that I like. I certainly do not have the time or the energy to undertake any significant DIY work on it. If I could buy a ready-to-run second hand at up to a grand that meets my needs I would do so.

And I'm really not in the mood for your usual patronising "you don't know what I know" style - I DO.

And the symmetry of "our" combined age being 100 amuses me.

[meic]

I dont know if you managed to get the very last of the screw-on hubbed but by that time, the Raleigh lightweights special products division stable was moving over to Uniglide cassettes.
I see in the 1989 catalogue it was specced with 105 hubs. Here they are 105 Uniglides from 1987-1989
http://velobase.com/ViewGroup.aspx?Grou ... dd364b43c4

[Brucey]

….. Simply want to ride as long as I can on a bike that I like. I certainly do not have the time or the energy to undertake any significant DIY work on it. If I could buy a ready-to-run second hand at up to a grand that meets my needs I would do so.

I quite understand; upthread you were talking about getting an LBS to sort out whatever conversion is to be done.

And I'm really not in the mood for your usual patronising "you don't know what I know" style

not intended to come over that way at all; just trying to help. In fact that is a rather patronising thing for you to say, isn't it...?

Suggestion; if there are lots of parts to change, why not invest a few quid in a donor bike (with the right bits on that you want; it sounds like various parts on it at present were not original perhaps?) and throw the lot at the LBS (or maybe someone local to you can lend a hand?). The net result ought to be 'the bike you really want' plus a heap of interesting parts that you can sell on. More than one way of skinning a cat and all that.

cheers

[David9694]

I spring frames by trapping the rear triangle in an open draw and bearing down on the front of the frame - essentially the “bit of wood” method. Don’t forget to follow Shelton’s advice about the alignment of the rear dropouts - they’ll be pointing slightly inwards if you have re-set the rear triangle. Engineers will say missing this puts a strain on your axle - you do want the wheel to come out and go back in easily, not least at the roadside.

I’ve generally invested in Shimano based 10 speed systems because (a) 10 is a nice round number and (b) it was the standard for about ten years. I use down tube friction levers (shimano 600 from Spa) very happily. Spa will also do you Tektro brakes that will fit your old-style drillings.

New, NOS or old, there’s a lot of vague descriptions on-line, a lot of hit and miss and trial/error and expertise needed to get things to work together, so I don’t blame you looking for a shop.