Raleigh Royal

[fredkite]

Any thoughts on the Raleigh Royal which sems excellent value for money for less than £400? Any alternatives for this price?

[james01]

There's the Claude Butler Regent & Dawes Horizon. I like the Raleigh's traditional steel frame, though.

[pioneer]

Fred, I bought one about a year ago. In July I returned it and got a full refund.
The goods points are:
The frame is well made and gives a comfortable ride.The overall package of components gives very good value for money. Because it is fairly bomb-proof with stable touring geometry it will roll over anything and also makes a great rough-stuff tourer.

Bad points: although the frame is well made,on mine,the paint finish was shocking.The paint on the drive side chainstay chipped off' in less than a week.
The assembly in the factory was atrocious.Very poorly finished wheels and the gears and brakes set-up was never right.

In short, if you want a sturdy,stable,go-anywhere tourer,then get one. But only if you don't mind constant fettling and returning it to the shop.After about three months or so,I'd had enough.

[james01]

http://www.spacycles.co.uk/products.php ... b1s21p1992

The Dawes Vantage seems OK for £400.

[largeallan]

Hi, I just got a Royal about 2 weeks ago for £450 from my LBS and couldn't be happier for the price really after 500+ miles. I've gone from an MTB and the contrast is unbelieveable in terms of comfort and rideability. I saw them cheaper than I paid, on the internet but prefered to pay a bit more from my local shop for peace of mind. I'm quite big at 6'2 and 16.5 stone but the bike copes well (55cm Frame) My longest ride so far has been 90 miles loaded up on the back, but I also intend to fit low riders on front.....performance seems unchanged when loaded. I've had it on main roads, single track roads and forestry commission type roads....no problems. If I had to change anything it would be the saddle, but in all honesty I dont know if my 'slightly' sore bum is down to this particular saddle, or the fact that its a different saddle than I'm used to...time will tell I guess and its something people often change anyway. My front derailleur needed tweaking after 100 miles or so, but the chap in the shop said to go easy on it for a while and was more than happy to perform some wee adjustments for me...the machine is brand new so only to be expected. Handlebar tape could be thicker, but again, this is a matter of preference really, I get sore hands after about 70 miles...oh, my paintwork seems fine, though that DID seem to be a common complaint on other reviews

Anyway, not an overly technical reviw, but this machine eats up the miles....I'm just left thinking how good an expensive tourer must be, though after banging in the miles training for LEJOG on my MTB i suppose anything will feel good

Defo a thumbs up from me

[pioneer]

I've just had a news letter from Raleigh and it seems that the Royal had been discontinued.What a mess that company is in.A great shame they couldn't get this bike right. It had all the hallmarks of a great budget tourer.

[gilesjuk]

If it's just the paint then if the frame and ride is good you can always get it powder coated.

[pioneer]

True, but you shouldn't have to do with a brand new bike!!

[random37]

£400 would get you something really special from a wanted ad here. I bought a tourer of comparable quality to the Raleigh for £40 the other week. It has obviously never done more than a couple of hundred miles in its life, then been forgotten in a shed for years.

Cheap tourers are fine, but the incidental bits always let them down. You will probably have to fiddle around to get good performance, and the parts won't last as long.

Of course, you'll have to replace bits as they wear out on anything; but if you're doing that, it's better to start with a more solid foundation.

[BenjaminRoome]

There is a fault in the 2010 model- The bosses on the front forks used for fixing a front rack are too low to attach lowrider racks and for every platform rack I've tried the forks have been too thick for the p-clips. Raleigh confirmed that this is a fault in the design.

In my eyes, for a touring bike this is completely unacceptable.

[Phil_Lee]

It's a shame they've dragged the Royal so far downmarket.
In 1987 the price was £343.00, which according to an online inflation calculator is the same as £740.88 now.
It was below only the Randonneur in the Raleigh range, with an almost identical frame (the chainstay spoke holders were the only difference), and a component fit only slightly lower in specification (and the biopace on the Randonneur wasn't to everyone's taste).
That part of Raleigh was losing money at the time, so it's likely that both the Royal and Randonneur cost more to produce than they charged for them - probably in an attempt to compete with the Galaxy.
My '87 Royal is still a very good bike, and well worth updating with more current components as existing ones wear out.
I bought it from an ad on the "For Sale" section of this site for £150, a couple of years ago, in almost perfect condition (you could - just - tell that it had been used!). It's seen a bit more use since

[yorkshiredoc]

I bought my Royal new about 15 years ago and I think it cost me about £550. Unlike the more recent Royals, it was handbuilt in Nottingham with Reynolds 708 tubing and the paintwork on mine still looks pretty good- in fact the whole bike still looks good! As has already been pointed out they were then competing with the Dawes Galaxy.

[saudidave]

This is a personal theory, but I reckon the second hand bicycle market holds more bargains than any other form of transport.

The percentage of bikes purchased that see no use beyond a maiden voyage by a relatively affluent, overweight and well intentioned purchaser is huge. In real terms (and I don't wish to offend low earners with this comment), even a top quality bike is dirt cheap to many people nowadays.

The point I am getting at is that if you look hard enough, you can find effectively new bikes on the second hand market at a fraction of the cost new.I bought a 6yrs old Dawes Galaxy from this forum last year that had travelled 600 miles in it's first week then was dry stored until I bought it. A £1200.00 bike for £350.00; new in real terms. I bought it off a retired bachelor living in a terraced house in a northern town. He wasn't a high flyer by any stretch, he was an ordinary bloke but a quality bike was nothing to him; just another toy, such was his disposable income.

[Cyril Haearn]

This is a personal theory, but I reckon the second hand bicycle market holds more bargains than any other form of transport.

The percentage of bikes purchased that see no use beyond a maiden voyage by a relatively affluent, overweight and well intentioned purchaser is huge. In real terms (and I don't wish to offend low earners with this comment), even a top quality bike is dirt cheap to many people nowadays.

The point I am getting at is that if you look hard enough, you can find effectively new bikes on the second hand market at a fraction of the cost new.I bought a 6yrs old Dawes Galaxy from this forum last year that had travelled 600 miles in it's first week then was dry stored until I bought it. A £1200.00 bike for £350.00; new in real terms
..

Right again, Plus One!

[Brucey]

I examined a Raleigh Royal a few years ago simply because it was the only thing that looked like a classic touring bike that was sold by Raleigh and was available in halfords; I wondered if it could be recommended to others or not. My verdict was (if you were remotely fussy) 'not'.

Basically it looked a lot like a steel-framed hybrid which someone had painted green and nailed dropped bars to before inflating the RRP to a higher level than the bike deserved. The transmission was 'heavily MTB based' so that the chainline was appropriate for a bike with chainstays about 2" further apart (so was utter rubbish; the small chainring lined up with the middle of the cassette AFAICT), the paintwork looked pretty mediocre, and the braze-ons looked a bit hit and miss too.

All a far cry from the Raleigh Royals of old; this one seemed to me to have been compared with a slightly blurred side-on-view of the real thing and was judged 'close enough', whereas in 3D you might come to a different view. Probably it rode better than it looked, but I couldn't help but think that they could easily have done so much better.

Presumably faced with dwindling sales, their idea of 'better' is not to bother at all.

cheers