Flyaway

[Ulu]

I looked at the steering cups and bearings, and decided I have some better chrome stuff to use.

I haven’t knocked out the cups yet, but I decided that there’s maybe a rusty splice right at the top front at the neck. There appears to be a little bit of swelling from rust, between the tube and the lug.

All the stuff has to wait right now, because I had a major malfunction on my garage door and I am in the process of rehabbing it. I have a powerful door opener, and when the door got caught on the track it just about folded the top panel in two.

I did some major re-construction to the top panel of the door, including making a three dimensional truss of light conduit and some perforated iron.

That was easy to figure out, but the hard part is that the existing top beam of the door was only attached to the top panel at the frame members. I ended up adding about 50 pop rivets to unitize the beam to the door panel.

I put a lite gauge sleeve in the top of the door panel and I put concealed rivets in it.

I added a lite gauge steel rail to the top of the top panel, anchoring it down with 20 sheet metal screws. Some of those go through the door into the sleeve that I added.




This fixed the structural problems, but you can still tell from the outside that the door was damaged.
I still have some cleaning painting and bodywork to do.

 

[Ulu]

Hmmm wth happened to my pic?
Oh well, you guys didn’t come here to look at garage doors.

What you wanna see is my bikes scattered all over the place like a tornado because I’ve been working on the door for three days.

 

[Ulu]

Well I’m finally happy that my garage door is sturdy enough that it won’t come apart or fold up if it gets a little sticky.

These photos look funny because I laid the top panel of the door flat inside the garage, and I’m looking down on top of the Top panel towards the bottom of the door.

This is where I spliced the aluminum door skin. It had a couple nasty cracks in it where the door had tried to fold in half, and I put some steel backup on the inside of the door to catch some of these pop rivets. The little channel shaped patch is made from a bit of aluminum door threshold. It has 20 pop rivets to make sure it has a good grip on the thin aluminum skin.

The decorative over-patch is made from a piece of commercial aluminum window frame. It covers everything, and both of these are set in silicone adhesive sealant.

Before I patched the outside of the door I pulled it straight by building this truss behind the door.

You can see the short adjustable post in the last photograph, and it allows me to put tension into the door. I can only put so much in before the door starts to twist, however. The bottom of the top panel is only stabilized by the top of the next panel down.

It is dark out, and I haven’t finished cleaning the outside of the door yet, so no photograph of that right now.

 

[Ulu]

I spent some time talking to my local bike dealer and also reading on the Velo Orange site, and I’ve decided that this bottom bracket and crankset will have to stay together forever.

Now my question is, will I use it on this build? Or use a nice sealed set and alloy cranks from my stack of goodies?

I spent too much time looking at the Velo orange site and I’m afraid I will be spending some money there in the near future.

 

[ingola]

I spent some time talking to my local bike dealer and also reading on the Velo Orange site, and I’ve decided that this bottom bracket and crankset will have to stay together forever.

Now my question is, will I use it on this build? Or use a nice sealed set and alloy cranks from my stack of goodies?

I spent too much time looking at the Velo orange site and I’m afraid I will be spending some money there in the near future.

Your stearer tube has same threading so can't change much there either unless you change the fork.

 

[Ulu]

True, and it was also my intention to have a custom fork. Also I struck out at Velo orange. They don’t have this “Raleigh” thread.

From what I can tell this 1-3/8”x26tpi BB thread is within just thousandths of an inch of the thread form for a 35 mm x 1 mm pitch.

This is readily available and should screw right in (rather stiffly perhaps) except it appears that that only the (unavailable ?) Swiss bike BB used that 35x1mm with the left-hand thread. All the available French stuff is right handed both sides.

It seems a new bb set is probably never going to be available for this bike.

At this point I’m not sure what I’m going to do, and I will delay judgment until I figure out if I can work with this lugged frame or not. I have a bottom bracket set with a single piece forged crank.

Meanwhile, my mind is reeling, that if you had a good manufacturing tolerance you could screw the English & metric bits together and make them work.

At least on paper!

Has anybody here done it in real life? I don’t have any French bike parts to test this theory.

Today I can actually go back to work on the bicycle, as I am finally satisfied that my garage door is going to survive another 20 years of service. It still needs some serious cleaning but I think I can shame my wife into that.

 

[ingola]

True, and it was also my intention to have a custom fork. Also I struck out at Velo orange. They don’t have this “Raleigh” thread.

From what I can tell this 1-3/8”x26tpi BB thread is within just thousandths of an inch of the thread form for a 35 mm x 1 mm pitch.

This is readily available and should screw right in (rather stiffly perhaps) except it appears that that only the (unavailable ?) Swiss bike BB used that 35x1mm with the left-hand thread. All the available French stuff is right handed both sides.

It seems a new bb set is probably never going to be available for this bike.

At this point I’m not sure what I’m going to do, and I will delay judgment until I figure out if I can work with this lugged frame or not. I have a bottom bracket set with a single piece forged crank.

Meanwhile, my mind is reeling, that if you had a good manufacturing tolerance you could screw the English & metric bits together and make them work.

At least on paper!

Has anybody here done it in real life? I don’t have any French bike parts to test this theory.

Today I can actually go back to work on the bicycle, as I am finally satisfied that my garage door is going to survive another 20 years of service. It still needs some serious cleaning but I think I can shame my wife into that.

I've heard of it being done but I've never tried it.

 

[ingola]

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/raleigh26.htmlThat might help get you answers

 

[ingola]

https://www.veloduo.co.uk/products/...tom-bracket-for-damaged-threads-swiss-raleighSo yes Swiss would fit

 

[Ulu]

Whoa! My heart just sped up a lot… I had no idea about the threadless bottom!

Maybe those are available somewhere in California?

(They definitely mention Sheldon Brown on the Velo site as, “I’m not Sheldon Brown… “)

 

[ingola]

Whoa! My heart just sped up a lot… I had no idea about the threadless bottom!

Maybe those are available somewhere in California?

(They definitely mention Sheldon Brown on the Velo site as, “I’m not Sheldon Brown… “)

Sheldon was the man. I've use the thread less worked great. The spindle was good to much like the original bike. I've restored a ton of these. Raleigh made great bikes but not always the easiest to custom. Rims are even worse many of the Raleighs had 40 hole hubs and rims. So replacements are hard to come by.

 

[Ulu]

These are 36 holes, but they’re heavy and old and I would like modern rims. I might however keep the coaster brake. I haven’t decided yet.

I think I used the Sheldon Brown spoke calculator when I ordered spokes for the build off bike. I’ve only read a little bit of his essays, but I will make time for more.

Where I thought I was going to get started on the bicycle today, I ended up spending more time cleaning up crooked trim on the house and preparing it to be painted, and doing the final cleaning on the garage door.

I need to do some more measuring and planning on this frame, to figure out where I’m going to cut it.

 

[Ulu]

I discovered, when I removed the thoroughly rotten tires, that these wheels were filled with very heavy thorn proof tubes.

Am I going to chuck a priceless antique rim liner?

Doing the dirty de-spoking:

Amazingly, there were no rusty spoke threads, and it all came apart easily.

Even more amazingly, my preliminary measurement of the seven speed hub versus the coaster brake hub reveals that my nice shiny spokes will fit the new Frankenwheel.

 

[Ulu]

Grinding an old American wrench to fit an odd, thin, Bendix nut. More than 11/16” but not quite 3/4”.

Once I made this wrench, I got the red band hub completely stripped.

It was full of dirty petrified grease, but it’s not worn out at all. It’s all soaking in a can of solvent right now.

I finally took a picture from the outside of my garage door after the patching. I was worried that this thing will be too obviously hand made, but it’s so small it’s barely noticeable.

I picked up this nice Shimano 600 set with bio-pace cogs. I don’t have any hardware for it, so I have to find a set of the little Shimano hollow bolts and nuts.

 

[Ulu]

Test shotz

I’m going to park these here so I can download them onto my other machine.

 

[Ulu]

A very self assured person once remarked to me, that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. I think that some folks have very poor imaginations. I mean, how would they know what a fish wants?

Unless they have fish and know fish.


I think little Buttercup wishes he could ride a bicycle, let me tell ya. He’s just dying to get out there. He seems more interested in riding the bicycle than my wife.

But he’s just a fish. He can only watch me go.

 

[Ulu]

I have decided that my thinking was out 180 degrees.

I have been struggling with ideas to convert this girl’s bike, Strictly for the sake of this contest, but I don’t actually need another boy’s bike.

I have 3 now, and I only have 2 or 3 male relatives coming over who may ride.

OTOH, I have 2 daughters and 8 granddaughters, a wife and a sister, and ONE operational girl’s bike.

This will get many mods, but it will stay a girl’s bike.

 

[ifitsfreeitsforme]

if you can't find any used crank bolts/nuts, I've purchased bags of them for very little money on eBay.

 

[Endlesschain]

two new tools I need, the english puller for the pins and to make a similar tool for the bb race, some good coversation happening here I wonder if there's any bespoke builders using cotter pin cranks, Trademe auction site here in nz have some sellers selling pins in a couple wedge pitches may have to get some for backups, I've learnt to be gentle with pins now but in my youth I must confess to being a hammerhead when it came to pin removal, we lives and learns

 

[GeePig]

I have decided that my thinking was out 180 degrees.

I have been struggling with ideas to convert this girl’s bike, Strictly for the sake of this contest, but I don’t actually need another boy’s bike.

I have 3 now, and I only have 2 or 3 male relatives coming over who may ride.

OTOH, I have 2 daughters and 8 granddaughters, a wife and a sister, and ONE operational girl’s bike.

This will get many mods, but it will stay a girl’s bike.

My builds are often only temporary, indeed an experiment in parts.

I don't know enough people ready to enjoy the bikes I build by riding them, and while I certainly have more than enough room to store them I have little desire to build such a collection. Here in the city I have the Romet Turing based build for last spring and summer's session, since modified, and a Romet Wigry that I keep fiddling around with. The bike I am about to build will be stripped by the end of January unless I find someone who wants it.