A Raleigh Twenty Refurbishment.

[oldwheels]

I have a Dawes Kingpin folder which I had intended to refurbish but that is getting doubtful now. Somebody has fitted wheelchair rims which makes me nervous as they are probably not designed for brake wear.
A tip I got which seems to work with a sticky hub gear is fill as far as possible with WD40 and give it a spin every day for about a week then drain and relube. Worked for me anyway. I also have a spare set of wheels and tyres for the same with a SA 3 speed which I keep meaning to advertise but never get round to it.

 

[EltonFrog]

@EltonFrog , i just used a pippet to put the paraffin in , keep spinning the wheel every now and again,leave the wheel with the oil port at the bottom it will drain out, i imagine gt85 will do the same job, i have still never stripped one down, i have a spare in the shed so may try it over the next few days.

I just watched RJ the bike guy’s video stripping one down. It looks straight forward enough!

 

[EltonFrog]

You’ve bloody well got me wanting one now 🤦🏻‍♂️

If you bide your time you can get them cheap as chips, free sometimes . But if you want better quality get a Kingpin, the frames are far superior.

 

[12boy]

I have been oil lubing my R SF3s since the local LBS had trouble making it work properly with the 2 types of grease. These don't have an oil port so I put 5/25 synthetic through the axle after taking the spindle out and laying the bike on the non drive side. The oil oozes out very slowly, so when the hub gets a bit noisy another couple of ccs go in. I use an old syringe dedicated to this purpose that has a small plastic tip that was left over from some long ago vet business. I've ridden with these hubs in temps ranging from -18 C to 40.5 C and they shift well. The problem with using gasoline or WD 40 would be in getting it all out without taking the hub apart.

 

[EltonFrog]

I started to clean up all the parts of the Twenty Alpha, but first I had to find some of the ball bearing I dropped yesterday, with that in mind I swept the driveway with a fine broom collected up the dust and grit and using a strong magnet I managed to find all the bearings plus another on that I had lost last year when refurbishing my BSA Tour de France and a Raleigh Scorpio. I set the bearings aside in a small glass jar along with bottom bracket bearing race and the BB balls as well and left them to soak in some white spirit, hopefully that'll get all the years of old grease off them.

Soaking in white spirit

With the BB bearing race.

I then set about trying to get the rust off the frame, there was a lot of it too but first the removal of the bottom headset race and the god awful plastic doodad that Raleigh use at the top of the head tube. These need a very good clean, but not today.

Bearing race and stupid plastic head tube sleeve.

Lots of Patina

Some folks who restore or refurbish old bikes like a bit of patina, Me? Not so much but I am determined not to spend money on this bike if I can help it, so there is going to patina on this Raleigh Alpha Twenty. So, out with the white spirit, fine wire wool, old cloths, cut and dry polish and a big tin of elbow grease. This frame is 42 years old and it has.t been treated very well of the years, as well as rust there's spray paint on it, other paint splashes and years of filth, grease and grime, sometimes its difficult to know where to start so I just got on with it.


I mounted the frame on my trusty old Black and Decker Workmate and cleaned it up, rust spots started to come off, the dirt was coming loose and the paint was starting to come through, as I progressed I notices more scratches but there is nothing I can do about those other than have the frame resprayed, I ain't doing that.

Bad welding and weld spots

Bad welding and weld spots

Raleigh Twenty sticker is hard to remove.
Cleaning up the frame
I have restored in the past a Dawes Kingpin, one of the things I noticed about the Twenty is that it is no where near as well made as the Kingpin, not even close. There are gaps in the seams where the seat stays meet the seat tube, where the two braces come down from main tube to the bottom bracket and signs of weld spatter, undercutting, visible lack of fusion.


After a few hours of wire wool cleaning and finishing off with a cutting compound car polish I got as far as I could with it.

That looks better
I still had one problem. I couldn't remove the sticker from the seat tube. Using wire wool and various products where not doing anything so in the end I poured lighter fuel on the sticker and set fire to it...that got the fecker off.... Eventually.


I DO NOT RECOMMEND YOU DO THIS, IT IS A STUPID THING TO DO.

Removing the seat tube sticker

After another final polish up and cleaning out the bottom bracket, head tube and seat tube it was time to pack it in for the day, approximatly 4.5 hours out there today. Lovely weather though.

It used to be a nice colour.

No more sticker.

 

[FrankCrank]

With regard to the welds, I remember reading that during their long production period there were batches of shoddy ones, so maybe yours is one of them? The one I have over here is a '77 vintage, and welds all look OK to me, although can't see through the paint of course. I assumed they were brazed, but in your pic it looks like MIG or O/A, done badly. Maybe with it being the budget model, they cut corners? Not having the built in side stand is real mean, that's one of the things I really like.

As to a contest with the Kingpin, my money's on the Twenty, simply because Raleigh used a massive main tube, over engineered in fact. I don't yet own a KP, still looking though. I would agree that the level of components winner is KP, buy the frame/fork are the crux of it for me, as I'd be ditching a lot of parts for more modern stuff. The KP also wins with their standard threading - easy to upgrade the BB to cartridge.

All personal preferences of course - dull world if we were all the same

 

[roadrash]

it is possible to replace the plastic bush with a 1" threadless headset , i know you don't want to spend but thought i would just point it out.
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/raleigh-twenty.html#headset

 

[EltonFrog]

it is possible to replace the plastic bush with a 1" threadless headset , i know you don't want to spend but thought i would just point it out.
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/raleigh-twenty.html#headset

Thanks for that, it’s a consideration, but I’ll probably pass. Still, it’s another reason why the Kingpin is a better bike. 😙

 

[roadrash]

I am beginning to think you prefer the kingpin over the twenty you right of course but there is just something about them that i like , cant put my finger on it , but there is.

 

[EltonFrog]

I am beginning to think you prefer the kingpin over the twenty you right of course but there is just something about them that i like , cant put my finger on it , but there is.

Lol, The Twenty has a charm, I rode a mint one about three weeks ago and it rode very well, they were certainly more successful than the Dawes Kingpin, even though Dawes came up with that style first.

I don’t like the way the main tube is attached to the seat and head tubes on the Raleigh, it looks as if it’s been done on the cheap, and the silly double brace tubes on the BB to the main tube, fiddly to clean and looks messy. The Kingpin’s lines are much neater, especially the earlier models.

 

[FrankCrank]

Lol, The Twenty has a charm, I rode a mint one about three weeks ago and it rode very well, they were certainly more successful than the Dawes Kingpin, even though Dawes came up with that style first.

I don’t like the way the main tube is attached to the seat and head tubes on the Raleigh, it looks as if it’s been done on the cheap, and the silly double brace tubes on the BB to the main tube, fiddly to clean and looks messy. The Kingpin’s lines are much neater, especially the earlier models.

No way Carl, completely missing the point . Raleigh designed the joints like that because they're brazed, you need more contact area to achieve a strong bond, and the way they did it is a great bit of engineering. No lugs, just cleverly formed, wrap around join allowing way more strength than is needed. Agree about the double brace tubes, a single larger one better. Would be good to have both frames to hand and get them both shot-blasted for close up scrutiny.

Anyways dear readers, all this sabre rattling is meant in jest, gotta do something during these testing times

 

[EltonFrog]

No way Carl, completely missing the point . Raleigh designed the joints like that because they're brazed, you need more contact area to achieve a strong bond, and the way they did it is a great bit of engineering. No lugs, just cleverly formed, wrap around join allowing way more strength than is needed. Agree about the double brace tubes, a single larger one better. Would be good to have both frames to hand and get them both shot-blasted for close up scrutiny.

Anyways dear readers, all this sabre rattling is meant in jest, gotta do something during these testing times

They may be strong but they’re fugly.

 

[roadrash]

beauty is in the eye of the beholder, now where did i leave my glasses...

 

[EltonFrog]

I started the clean up up on the fork and chain guard today. First the fork had a lot more paint damage than the frame plus it had remnants of blue and silver spray paint on it for some reason, over spray from something from the previous owner.

Blue spray paint

Grime, dirt and rust

Paint missing

Silver & blue spray paint.
So with fine wire wool, a wire brush the size of a toothbrush and white spirit I cleaned off the rust spots that would come off and 99% of the spray paint, then a good old polish with T-cut and a shine up. I also removed and de-greased the bottom bearing race and put it back in place.

Spray paint gone

Rust spots removed

Nice and shiny

It’s probably difficult to see in the photos but there is big improvement on the fork.
The chain guard is in a sorry state, dented, scratched and the mounting hole has rusted away.

The same treatment with this, as above and then i cut a strip of metal and using Araldite I glued the strip to the underside of the guard, hopefully that will be strong enough to hold the mounting screw when I come to re-build the bike.

Rusty hole

Glued and clamped

Repaired

Polished up.
The chain guard is better but far from perfect, the repair will need a tidy up, and maybe a Raleigh branded decal will hide the pedal scar in the middle.

Today I also put the rustiest of the chrome part in a pail of Oxalic acid, with a bit of luck that will take all of the hard work out of cleaning them up, I’ll leave them to soak in the solution for 24 hours then polish them up. I’ve cleaned up worse than this in the past, but it’s a lot of graft, I hope this will make life easier.

Rusty chrome

Oxalic Acid

 

[Gunk]

Take your time, you’ll have plenty of it!