Smackhead Express - Raleigh Routier

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OP
OP
wafter

wafter

I like steel bikes and I cannot lie..
Location
Oxford
Thanks for updating this thread @wafter I've enjoyed rereading it.

Bikes like this are great, whether £25 Raleigh, a £2000 Surly or a Rivendell. Built to do a job, great paintwork and with no pretensions.

Absolutely - built bloody well too; I doubt anything currently available at the entry-level would look / function this well in 40yrs..


Not much to report other than the results of an impulse measuring on the crankset's Q-factor last night.

Measured between outer crank faces gave a value of around 154mm (so about 7mm more than most modern road cranksets) coupled with the wide pedals giving an effective pedal spacing of around 275mm which is about midway between a road crank with skinny pedals and an MTB item with fat pedals. Irritatingly it's offset by about 1.5mm to the DS, but it's no big thing.

Obviously this measurement is somewhat specific to this bike, since with square taper setups the Q-factor is dependent on the BB dims themselves and by association the width of the BB shell in the frame.


In other news I swung by the shops earlier today and saw the spitting image of the Routier parked outside - same frame size and everything; better nick with less corrosion and apparently entirely original spec (including grotty chromed rims and arse-wrecker saddle) aside from some nice tan wall tyres :smile:

IMG_20250512_174011.jpg


Seeing a nice example makes me feel a bit bad about how mine's languished in the outside, and will probably be subject to similar treatment in future.. however I have to remind myself that had I not rescued it from the streets it would probably have been turned into Chinese bean tins by now.


FInally I'm tempted to wrap the bars with some more tape, since the existing (original) stuff is tatty, thin and correspondingly uncomfortable. I see Halfords are currently doing Cinelli natural-colured cork stuff for decent money (with the additional incentive of no postage as I can collect) however the counter to that idea is that it requires me to put my hand in my pocket, detracts from the bike's originality and the better it looks the more incentive there is to rob it..
 

Paulus

Started young, and still going.
Location
Barnet,
Absolutely - built bloody well too; I doubt anything currently available at the entry-level would look / function this well in 40yrs..


Not much to report other than the results of an impulse measuring on the crankset's Q-factor last night.

Measured between outer crank faces gave a value of around 154mm (so about 7mm more than most modern road cranksets) coupled with the wide pedals giving an effective pedal spacing of around 275mm which is about midway between a road crank with skinny pedals and an MTB item with fat pedals. Irritatingly it's offset by about 1.5mm to the DS, but it's no big thing.

Obviously this measurement is somewhat specific to this bike, since with square taper setups the Q-factor is dependent on the BB dims themselves and by association the width of the BB shell in the frame.


In other news I swung by the shops earlier today and saw the spitting image of the Routier parked outside - same frame size and everything; better nick with less corrosion and apparently entirely original spec (including grotty chromed rims and arse-wrecker saddle) aside from some nice tan wall tyres :smile:

View attachment 772813

Seeing a nice example makes me feel a bit bad about how mine's languished in the outside, and will probably be subject to similar treatment in future.. however I have to remind myself that had I not rescued it from the streets it would probably have been turned into Chinese bean tins by now.


FInally I'm tempted to wrap the bars with some more tape, since the existing (original) stuff is tatty, thin and correspondingly uncomfortable. I see Halfords are currently doing Cinelli natural-colured cork stuff for decent money (with the additional incentive of no postage as I can collect) however the counter to that idea is that it requires me to put my hand in my pocket, detracts from the bike's originality and the better it looks the more incentive there is to rob it..

That's a lovely colour. I rebuilt a Raleigh Royal a few years back with the same colour scheme. They are really almost bomb proof bikes.
20220722_131154.jpg
 
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