Autumn Leaves and 1958 Raleigh 4-Speed Sports

The leaves in the White Memorial Foundation land are about at peak color these days. Many of the trees turn yellow in the fall, and they all seem to turn about the same time. We had a warm, sunny day today, so a good chance for a ride. The leaves really glow in the sunlight.

 This 1958 Raleigh Sports is a great rider and a very attractive vintage bike.

Phillips Roadster - Trail Rides - Fall 2019

Beautiful day for a trail ride - 65 degrees and sunny. There's not much time left in the season here in western New England: the days are getting shorter and the weather is starting to turn colder. But with warm weather for a short while longer, this is a good time to ride.

I did a small tune-up on the Phillips this weekend, and then took a ride earlier today. The trail was very crowded, but that's to be expected with good weather in October. The Phillips draws a lot of attention on the trail, and the bike has withstood the test of time.

 One addition I did make earlier this week was a rubber tip on the Greenfield kickstand. The Greenfield stand is a black, aluminum stand that is compatible with this particular set of rod brakes. A Raleigh DL-1 type bicycle will require the ESGE Raleigh-model kickstand. But this Phillips has a little more space below the bottom bracket for a kickstand, so a Greenfield works. The Greenfield has a rather small tip, so it is a good idea to add a rubber foot to the stand. This particular rubber foot is specially designed for the Greenfield stand, and works nicely on the bike.

Autumn 2019

The fall certainly is here. It's chilly and we have less daylight. But the weekends and the local trails still offer a chance to ride. I'll be riding right up until winter forces me to stop. Time to bundle up a bit is all...

Phillips 3-Speed - Farmington River Trail

Nice day for a ride here, though lots of walkers and joggers on the trail make the going a bit slow. This  Phillips is a great bike for a leisurely, weekend ride.

Nice Fall Evenings

A little warmer and more humid for part of the week, but crisper, fall-like weather has returned. We're starting to get a little color on some of the trees now - not much, but it's starting. Fall comes a little earlier in New England than down south. And it's a good time to ride some class 3-speeds over the road here in Connecticut.

Riding over-the-road rather than on a repeating circuit or a track is challenging, but it is also rewarding. Even if it is a round-trip to a local park or lake a few miles away, it's always nice to go from Point A to Point B and back using the roads as they present themselves to you. I also enjoy riding on bike trails quite a lot, and I think to get the most of riding, it's good to mix road riding and bike trail riding to you take in a fair bit of each.

Losing Daylight, but Good Weather

The very late summer and early fall is a mix of sorts - less daylight than during the summer, but generally the best riding weather of the year. Today was no exception: it's getting dark earlier, but wonderful weather for a ride. Cool and dry weather is the best, in my book.

So here are a few pictures of a ride on my 1947 Schwinn New World on the always excellent Farmington River Trail in Collinsville. This evening, I rode from Collinsville down to Unionville and back. It's a pleasant, relatively easy ride. There are a few bumps along the way, but nothing terrible. It's a great trail.

The Farmington River Bike Trail - Canton, Collinsville, Burlington, Unionville

If you happen to be riding at all in northwestern Connecticut, I urge you to try the Farmington River Bike Trail, which runs through several towns in Hartford County. The trail is not terribly hilly, and is quite scenic.

Also, much has been done to improve this trail over the years. When I first rode this trail probably 15 years ago, it was very basic - a few paved spots, some dirt spots, a couple wooden benches along the way. Today, the trail is mostly paved, has lots of places to sit or to picnic, and lots of on-trail parking areas. This trail is a real gem here in western Connecticut.

Summer Evening Rides

Riding a Raleigh DL-1 type bike over-the-road and on some pretty demanding hills is not easy. The bike is kind of heavy for going uphill, and the brakes are underwhelming going downhill. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try it.

This Raleigh export model roadster is geared pretty low - 44 teeth on the sprocket and 21 teeth on the cog. This gives it at least some ability to climb hills, provided you are smart and conserve your energy, and use the low first gear to climb. The old-style long crank arms give decent leverage, and if you corkscrew your way up the hill, you should be able to make it just fine. Your mindset needs to be one of gradually getting to the top rather than thrashing up a hill with this bike.

Going downhill requires awareness and planning. You're not going to be able to fly down a hill and then slam on the brakes for an emergency stop. The best idea is to allow the bike to coast down the hill, but with judicious use of the brakes so that you do not "out-ride your ability to stop". If you ride on particularly quiet roads, you can corkscrew to the bottom as a skier might do on a steep hill.

But with some patience and the understanding that your goal is to make the journey - rather than racing to the finish - you can complete an over-the-road ride with a DL-1 type bikes on some pretty steep hills. And unlike lighter, faster bikes, the DL-1 can take you over these roads, bet they paved or unpaved dirt.

1962 Raleigh Rod Brake Roadster Export Model

The last of the bikes moved from Virginia to Connecticut was the Raleigh roadster export model, which made the trip at the end of January. I loaded my Jeep to the ceiling with the stuff left to be moved, threw the bike rack onto the back, and loaded up the Raleigh.

Unfortunately, the day proved to be bitterly cold, windy, and snowy. The Raleigh was subjected to corrosive road salt and brine most of the 300+ mile journey. When I arrived in Connecticut, I basically hosed-down the bike with WD-40 to prevent moisture from mixing with the salt.

While this helped to some degree, the bike still had a fair bit of corrosion on it. Over the course of two weekends, I totally took the bike apart. I cleaned all the parts, and put any rusty parts into Evaporust formula. Evaporust is expensive, but it can be re-used and it does a good job removing rust from small parts.

After re-assembling the bike, I decided to put it through it a test by riding over several dirt farm roads in the area. The black flies and deer flies were brutal along these roads, but the bike made it through just fine. It's a little dusty from riding, but the corrosion from the road salt is long gone and it's back on the road.

 The pictures in this post are from the dirt road ride. The DL-1 style roadsters excel on this kind of road, though you still have to take it a bit slow because of all the loose stones and the rather marginal rod brakes. But you can still ride these roads, and the rod brake roadster is far preferable on dirt and gravel compared to the Sports-style light roadster or the clubman-style racing bike.

Schwalbe Delta Cruiser White Walls - 26 x 1 3/8

I recently got a helpful tip from a reader here to check out the Schwalbe Delta Cruiser tires, which now come in a white wall pattern. I will admit the tread is not necessarily the most traditional, but the Delta Cruisers are rightfully well-regarded tires that provide a little more cushion than the basic Kenda or Duro offerings.

My 1958 Raleigh Sports needed new white wall tires (it's the only Raleigh with white walls I own, but in 1958 white walls were certainly appropriate).

These white wall tires have the usual Delta Cruiser quality and that little extra size and cushion compared to more basic tires. They're not as cushy or large as the Panaracer Col de la Vie tires, but they're certainly a bit more forgiving than most tires in the 26 x 1 3/8 (650A) size.

So check out these tires if you're looking for  a bit better white wall than Duro or a Kenda tire. There's nothing wrong with the more basic tires, but these Delta Cruisers may be an option if you need to deal with bumpier roads like I do.

1951 Raleigh Clubman - A Classic 3 Speed Road Bike

About this time last year, I bought a 1951 Raleigh Clubman and stashed it in storage at my family's place not far from where I would eventually be moving to in Connecticut. The bicycle sat in a box for a few months, and this spring I began gradually getting it back together.

I made a few changes and upgrades as I worked on the bike, and eventually I was left with what I think is a pretty nice Clubman. There are a few items that need some tweaking, mainly I think I'll replace the narrow saddle with a Brooks Flyer (the B17 with springs). Our roads here are rough enough that the springs will probably be helpful.

The bicycle really is a lively performer - it's deceptively light for a steel framed bike and everything is quite well-made on it. The aluminum Bluemels fenders are a great touch, and I prefer aluminum over the old celluloid type (celluloid tends to crack).

While this project is not 100% done, I think I'm almost there. The main item now is to go to a bit more comfortable saddle.

As an interesting side note, I ended up making a custom, fixed-length Sturmey Archer shifter cable for this bike. I managed to locate my Bell Systems Type-B crimper and some brass tube stock. Using the crimper, a cable blank, and the brass tube stock you can make your own Sturmey Archer cable that is a fixed-length type, just like the originals. These will not have the "cinch bolt" type mount back by the rear wheel that the generic type shifter cables today have. The job isn't hard, but takes attention to the measurements.

The test ride for this bike was a baptism of fire, of sorts: a ride of several quite hilly miles to a lake in the next town over and back again. The bike performed nicely, though as I mentioned before, the saddle could use a little more cushion on our bumpy roads. When I lived on relatively short flat streets in suburban Virginia, a test ride would have been a 10 minute out-and-back loop never more than a short walk from home. But here in a more rural environment in western New England, riding is more done on the open-road instead of on looped little streets. So why not test it in the true road-going fashion?

The ride position is somewhat aggressive, but nothing terrible. The John Bull grips are very comfortable. I added a little Newbaum's cloth tape to give a second spot to grip on the bars so I can vary my ride position a bit.

I'm pretty happy with the bike - it's certainly different from the vanilla Raleigh Sports or the heavy Raleigh Tourist/DL-1 bikes. Each type has its place in a good collection, and they each have a different ride personality on the road. All we need now is some more good weather.

Humid Evening Ride to East Shore Road

A successful, but humid evening ride over to East Shore Road in Morris. Got a little rained on along the way, but nothing to soak me. The Panaracer Col de la Vie tires add a little extra cushion, and that comes in handy along some of these roads. But at the top of the hill along East Shore is a very nice little park.

To the Lake and Back

When I lived in Virginia, I did a lot of riding on local streets, which were largely flat and were limited to quiet, residential areas. I didn't do much over-the-road riding because the streets that went through longer distances like that had so much traffic that it really wasn't worth it.

Here in Connecticut, we don't have the flat streets the way we had in the tidewater of Virginia, but we do have some rather nice back roads that don't get quite as much traffic as there was in Virginia. The result is that I've gradually been doing some longer trips rather than riding circuits around residential streets.

This evening I took a ride from the center of town down a wooded state road, and finally over to a lake in the next town to our south. This ride was certainly more challenging - plenty of up-and-down over the hills. But at last, I reached the lake on my 1958 Raleigh 4-speed. I coasted back into town and got back to the car after a ride of about an hour in total.

1958 Raleigh Sports 4-Speed Ride

After several months of sitting in storage, this 1958 Raleigh Sports is back on the road. This was one of the bikes I moved before winter set in, so that it would not be exposed to road salt while transporting it to my new home. The bike then sat in storage for the winter, and into May, when I finally got around to pulling it back out and putting it back on the road.

One of the good things about the Sturmey Archer gear systems is that they tend to store well - that is, they are mostly closed systems that aren't prone to rusting or getting damaged in storage. All this bike needed was a good dusting and a little air in the tires. Then it went right back on the road as if it had been running right along.

This is probably the last season for these Duro white wall tires. My experience with the Duro tires is that quality is hit-or-miss. I had a set on a Raleigh Sprite that seemed to last well - not prone to separately or fading. The set on this 1958 Sports is starting to separate where the wall and the tread meet, never a good sign. But I think they have one more season in them before a change is needed.

The local nature preserve is White Memorial in Litchfield, Connecticut. White Memorial is a well-known wildlife refuge in our area, and is well-regarded as a place where people can walk, run, bike, snowshoe, and cross-country ski. The roads in White Memorial are paved, but there are also dirt paths through the woods, as well as a few dirt roads to other areas. There are lots of opportunities to see wildlife and many types of birds.