Raleigh Chain Ring: Cleaning

I got a little work in this evening on the Raleigh Sports project. I managed clean off the old grease on the chain ring and do a little polishing.  There are some scratches, but nothing too bad.












Raleigh chrome, like its black paint, was outstanding. It tends to be quite durable and shine up nicely. This particular chain ring is a 48 tooth. It will be paired with a 24 tooth cog. I'm a fan of the 2:1 ratio. My other Sports is a 46 with a 22, so not quite 2:1, but pretty close.

Believe it or not, I still don't have a bicycle work stand. For this particular job, a decent step ladder with a fold-out work tray will stand in. The tray is plastic so will not damage the paint.

1958 Raleigh Sports: Hedging Bets With a Sturmey Archer FW

As many of you likely know, the Sturmey Archer SW hub has a bad reputation for reliability. The root of the problem is that the design can allow the hub to cam out of gear in second or third gear. Its unreliability is unlike the very reliable AW. The 1958 Spots has an SW hub.






I recently came into possession of a 1956 Sturmey Archer FW four speed hub. This is essentially the four speed version of the classic AW. It has two gears below normal: a bottom gear and a low gear. It has the usual normal gear, and it has a modest over drive. The bottom gear is lower than the AW, but the high gear is also lower than the AW's high.
  

The result is a lower geared hub with greater hill climbing potential. If I have one gripe about the AW, it's that the low gear sometimes isn't quite low enough, even with a larger rear cog. This FW hub will need a dust cap, cog, spacers, and cog lock spring. I can certainly swing that. It has the all important non-drive side shifter push rod, which is key.



The bottom line is that I now will have a choice between the stock SW or the four speed. I am actually leaning toward the FW and making this Sports more suited to hilly trails and terrain than my 1974 (AW with a 22 tooth cog). The set up would be a 24 tooth rear cog and FW hub. I lose a little top end, but gain a fair bit on the bottom for climbing.

Polishing and Cleaning Bicycle Paint, etc.: 1958 Raleigh

I had a chance to work on the 1958 Raleigh Sports project a bit this afternoon. I fired up the space heater and got to work. My task for today was to further disassemble the bicycle, remove the old headbadge rivets, and generally clean up the bicycle in preparation for rebuilding. 


The first order of business was to remove the headbadge rivets. Someone in the past ground down the original headbadge rivets, removed the heron headbadge, drilled new holes, and placed a new, larger badge on the head tube. The original rivets were quite soft and ground down pretty far.

I removed them by pulled the fork, then driving the original rivets into the head tube using a 1/16 inch punch. The punch size was perfect for the holes. The rivets drove in and fell out quite easily.

I followed that by moving on to cleaning up the finish. As I posted earlier, it's best to polish and get your paint ready before touching it up. This gives you a chance to see exactly what you need to match. Raleigh black paint is very durable and polishes up nicely. The decals remain in excellent condition as well.

After working the frame, I moved onto the fork and chainguard.

Even the small, brightwork clips that hold the cables and chainguard in place were polished.

I also paid attention to the lamp bracket and headset parts. Attention to detail pays off: having nice paint with shiny bright work will set this bike apart from refurbishments that cut corners.













I used Simichrome on the brightwork and NuFinish Scratch Doctor on the paint.






















At this point, the bicycle is pretty well broken down. I still need to clean and lubricate the bottom bracket parts. This is very likely going to be an attractive bicycle.

Compared to the first picture in this post, you can see how the polish blended away the rather obvious paint fading outline. The badge that was on this bicycle appears to have been a large, oval badge. I will fill in the oval scratches where the badge was and then place a vintage, Raleigh heron badge back on the bike using the original rivet holes.