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Friday, July 2, 2010

Plans for the Lady?

a shot from the Lady's very short stay at home
For the past few weeks, the Lady Raleigh has been sitting in storage at Quad Bikes while I tried to think of what to do about her decrepit real wheel.  There was a brief but thrilling moment where it seemed that there might be salvation from California, with dear reader Corey K. offering to check out what appeared to be a Raleigh rim with Sturmey-Archer hub in place; but it was not to be.*  Then there was an inquiry with a local craigslist bike guy, who happened to have a like-new rim from a 1960s Raleigh Sports that he could give me; but he ended up advising that if I were going to be rebuilding the rear wheel anyway, I might as well upgrade to an alloy rim to up my braking power.

So it's finally happening on Thursday.  The Lady Raleigh will be getting a brand new Sun CR-18 alloy rim, and I get to come watch!  I really wanted to try doing it myself with the wheel-building class at Broadway Bicycle School, but you have to have completed their advanced course first, and they don't even have another wheel-building class scheduled for the rest of the summer.  Plus, the advanced class seems like it would be perfect for the Lady Raleigh herself, since it covers wheel truing and overhauling the headset and rear hub; so it would be good to have her up and running for when that starts in August.  

I have a lot more to say about the basic class that I'm taking at Broadway (short answer is: I love it!), but just wanted to give a quick update on the Lady's health for now.


*Here's Corey K.'s hilarious summing up of the encounter:
"He was a bike guy- in too good of shape, and too clean-cut to be a fixie-kid hipster. I don't know if it was ignorance or malice. But the Craigslist rim in question, while in decent enough shape, was a 27 x 1 1/4 rim like a '70s 10-speed would have. Bah!"

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have Sun CR-18 rims on my Raleigh Sports, and they've been great for me so far. They seem very sturdy, and honestly, after a year and a half of riding every day, I haven't really needed to true the wheels at all. I'm sure they're probably slightly off, but not enough that I care or notice.

That should be a somewhat cheaper endeavor than replacing the rear hub too, which is great!

Look forward to hearing how you like it once you get out on it!

Amy said...

I'm looking forward to hearing about how the new wheel works out too! I though about doing something along those lines to my Hercules, since she still has the original Dunlop steel rims. Which means NO braking in very wet/freezing wet weather.

The classes that you speak of sound like fun! I had to teach myself how to do those things out of the Glenn's Complete Bicycle Manual. Which is a good manual, but there might have been less frustration if there had been a class available.

Velouria said...

Oh good!
Hooray for braking power : )

Corey K said...

On second thought, I bet it was malice.
(raises eyebrow sternly)



It's too bad that the class schedules will not
allow you to build your own rear wheel, but you can get The Lady on the road in the meantime, and build a new front wheel with a matching rim in the fall. That ought to be fun.

Glad to see that you are going to be able to move forward with the old girl.

Enjoy her- she's arguably one of the best bikes ever made.

Corey K

Corey K said...

Will our Lady glide with renewed grace and vigor?

Will Margonaute find herself inspired by the timeless not-quite-racer qualities of the renowned Raleigh Sports geometry?

Will our two heroines stop in time to miss that tree?

Stay tuned 'til next time,
for another episode of

"As The Wheel Turns"

CK

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