Raleigh Touriste

[mikeymustard]

I've been struggling to find anything interesting (in my price range, so in desperation almost, picked this up.

It's been round the world a few times, but I thought it might be a cheap way to move a Carlton frame project on a bit.
After giving it a bit of a look over it didn't appear so bad, apart from a bit of rust bubbling up on the front of the top tube. I don't know what to do with it now, I feel I should investigate the rust problem but that would involve a bit of paint removal.
On the plus side, underneath the ratty old seat cover I found a v.tidy B17 saddle, so it basically owes me nothing.

 

[mjr]

Yes, check the rust. It might make another project for someone. Raleigh has its fans.

 

[biggs682]

@mikeymustard are they not 531 ?

 

[raleighnut]

^^^^ I thought so too, Raleighs version of a Galaxy at the time. What does the frame No. start with?

 

[mikeymustard]

yes it's 531 main tubes - and quite light too, it weighs in at just under 12kg with rear rack and guards attached.
The serial number is B29071 - not seen a B prefix before, what does it mean?

 

[raleighnut]

Best I can find is 'seen but unknown' but then Raleigh frame numbering was always all over the place (They even carried on with the W prefix after Worksop had been closed)

 

[mikeymustard]

At least they kept the W prefix for a reason [i.e. implying that the "Lightweight Division" was the same as Carlton's factory]. They'd also had a stable numbering system for a good 17 years by 1990 to be fair to them.
I did a little trawling before I went to bed last night and found a few mentions of randonneur, royal and touriste models having similar frame numbers (particularly this ctc thread), they start with a letter then a number and then possibly manuf date - mine seems to date to 1990 (crank arm code OG), I haven't found enough numbers to be sure though, is there a Randonneur register maybe?

 

[mikeymustard]

Well I widened my search this morning, looking at other Special Products Division bikes such as the Dynatech frames and M-Trax mtb's and it seems that my first thoughts about the frame number date were wrong, it seems a couple of coincidentally numbered frames led me down a blind alley!
It looks like the prefix letter on these bikes is actually the date code, with A starting out in '89 or '90 going up to (the highest I've found) K being probably 2000.

I found several SN's on the YACF forum