A Triumph Traffic Master rebuild

[FrankCrank]

Okay folks, thought I'd entertain you with a rebuild of this old timer of '79 vintage. No surprise to most it's a rebadged Raleigh Stowaway. Only noticeable difference is the crankset design and a few stickers. Acquired the bike on my recent visit back there

I fully dismantled it and brought it here in my luggage. As well as folding, the frame comes apart just by undoing a bolt, so makes for easy transportation.

As an aside, my airline of choice is EvaAir - they offer a generous 2x23kg check-in baggage allowance, even for cattle class.

Anyways, my plan is to put the bike back together, servicing as I go, and a few mods along the way. So, hope you can join me on this journey, and please do ask any questions at each stage, if you need more detail.

Thought I'd start with the wheels. As standard, these bikes have 451mm wheels with steel rims, but in the States they get 406 as standard. Both are known as 20" wheels just to confuse things. I'll be converting to 406 with alloy rims. This gives greater tyre and tube choice, but more importantly better braking.

I'm gonna keep the original front hub - it's a clever piece of engineering in my opinion

It has one fixed cone, the other is adjustable, but no lock-nuts. The chrome has no rust spots at all, amazing after 40 plus years. It's stamped with 'Sturmey Archer', and has a real quality feel to it, way better than some of the newer wheels that have come my way recently. The cones have a shoulder on them which locates into the 'keyhole' of the dropouts, holding it firmly in place, even without tightening the nuts. I think this is unique to Raleigh and its rebadged variants of the period. Discovered one side had 10 bearings, the other 9, so popped an extra one in along with fresh grease.

I already had a donor 28h wheel, so that's good for a rim and spokes, and I've got some brass nipples instead of the rubbish steel ones. The donor wheel had different hub dimensions - the flanges were closer together and the spoke hole circumference was bigger. Luckily, these two cancel each other out from a spoke length perspective, so the spokes were the perfect size for this new hub/rim combo

Here's the wheel on the Park Tools truing stand (ha ha)

And completed

 

[biggs682]

Enjoy the refurbishment

 

[Gwylan]

Impressive. I leave wheels alone. But, seeing your jig I could be tempted.
Anyone know of wheel care training courses?

 

[FrankCrank]

On with the rear wheel now

This hub is another donor part. Nothing wrong with the original, just that it was 28h, and I'd have needed some new spokes to fit to a 406 rim. The donor was already on a 406, 36h, which I prefer anyways. 28h seems fine for the front, but a bit mean for a rear. It's a newer style AW hub, but not yet SunRace era when they went to ally shells. There's no date stamp on it either, but it must be some point after 1996 as the donor bike had v-brakes.

Here's the completed rear wheel

 

[FrankCrank]

Impressive. I leave wheels alone. But, seeing your jig I could be tempted.
Anyone know of wheel care training courses?

Here's the tutorial I use now

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEv9IqMvUnQ&t=7s


It's very thorough, but also easy to follow. The section I use starts about one hour in. Hope it helps

 

[EltonFrog]

Impressive. I leave wheels alone. But, seeing your jig I could be tempted.
Anyone know of wheel care training courses?

Colwood Wheel Works, Hailsham, Sussex. Vince Warner.

 

[FrankCrank]

Here's the frame

As you can see, it easily comes apart if needed. Paintwork is pretty good overall, just a few nicks and scratches to show it's had a life.

A closeup of the hinge. There's no denying it's crude, but I think effective. It would be unfair to compare with modern folders. This was intended to fold and fit into a car boot, rather than as something you'd bring on trains and into the office.

Notice the handle points to the front of the bike.........

.....this is achieved by adjusting the nuts below the rubber cover. Pretty nifty eh.

And here's the infamous nylon bush that serves as the upper head bearing. Sir Walter intended the bike to be aimed at new riders, and it was thought that the bush offered some stiction so that the steering was less skittish. You can decide for yourself on that one. Have converted a couple of these to regular bearings, but I'll leave this as is, at least for now.

 

[FrankCrank]

Had to squish the rear end in a little to accommodate the OLD of the hub. Checked the dropout alignment also, a couple of old axles come in handy for the job

Sorry the pictures are a bit blurred - hope you can see they're a tad misaligned.....

......a bit of leverage on the axles persuades them back into line.

Test fitting rear wheel.

The homemade work stand coming in real handy. You'd never guess, I made the clamp part out of an old fork

 

[Gwylan]

Had to squish the rear end in a little to accommodate the OLD of the hub. Checked the dropout alignment also, a couple of old axles come in handy for the job
View attachment 701291
Sorry the pictures are a bit blurred - hope you can see they're a tad misaligned.....
View attachment 701292
......a bit of leverage on the axles persuades them back into line.


View attachment 701294
Test fitting rear wheel.

View attachment 701295
The homemade work stand coming in real handy. You'd never guess, I made the clamp part out of an old fork

Ah! Looking at the alignment photos makes me wonder about one of our bikes.
I thought the axle was bent.
More plausible is that the frame might need a touch to line everything up. It did a have a bit of a shunt on the ice back in the winter.

 

[FrankCrank]

Had some mudguards left over from another project that I never got going on, so will try on this build

The tyres come from a factory a few miles down the road. At three quid each, they go with the cheap charlie folder ethic

Onto the BB now, and building up the crank. I didn't remove the drive side cup. If I needed to remove it, I'd use the nut and bolt method

The chrome cleaned up almost like new, lots of bling! This crank design is also used on the BSA shopper.

Spins real nice with a helping of fresh grease. The 'soap bar' pedals appear to be non serviceable, but they work just fine.

Chain guard installed, and treated it to a new chain.

 

[Gunk]

Love your builds @FrankCrank keep them coming.

 

[FrankCrank]

Up next, the brakes, or lack thereof. The standard brakes are fairly useless to put it mildly, especially against steel rims. The new aly rims will help a bit, but I want to keep the original calipers as they are part of the bike. OK, I admit it, it adds more bling.
The front caliper fits, but only just reaches the rims.........phew.

Notice also, between the caliper and fork, a small bracket like a pair of praying hands. That hits the half round plate on the head tube and acts as a steering stop.

Now onto the rear, and the caliper arms are now about 5mm too short to reach the rims. Time for a bodge

The plate on the frame for the caliper has extra holes for a rack as well, so may as well use all of those

Raided the scrap bin and knocked up this bracket. Not gonna look pretty, but will do for now

Someone of this parish (name escapes me) recently did a R20 project, with conversion to BMX wheels. He said both his calipers just about reached, so he was lucky. Can only assume his had longer reach calipers, maybe from the USA destined bikes, which were supplied with BMX size wheels as standard. Have heard it said before that Raleigh were in the habit of going through their parts bins, using up stock, so it would be no surprise to see many variations. These 20" wheeled bikes were being made from 1968 to 1984, and were their biggest seller in the mid to late seventies. If you had to catalogue all the permutations during that period, it would be quite a tome!

 

[Gunk]

If you paint the bracket black, it’ll look OK

 

[FrankCrank]

Time now to get the cockpit sorted

Decided to keep the original cables as they were in good condition and didn't feel like they were binding in any way. The trigger shifter works great - missing the aly front cover, but no big deal.

I always set the gears up with the shifter in 3rd gear, then just keep a little free play in the cable.

I gave up on trying to fit the original caliper, attached to the bodged bracket I made. The plate was too thin, and you could see it flexing when the brakes were applied, so not too good. Anyways, have this more modern aly one fitted now. It didn't quite have enough reach, so a little filing was needed. At least no bracket needed now

 

[FrankCrank]

And here's the completed (as if) bike

It fits in the car OK with the seats down

And finally, alongside its stablemate

A few test rides already, no flexing or rattles, very solid indeed. I think if you rode it yourself blind folded, you wouldn't think it was a small wheeled shopper bike. Mind you, doubt you'd get far before crashing

It's been great fun doing this project, and if you followed all the way to here, then thanks for watching