Show off your British Cycles (1975 Raliegh Sprite 27)

[goraman]

I know for those of you in England these bikes are probably every where, but here in the U.S. not so much.
I bought someones project bike.
I paid $160.00 for it,she was in pretty bad shape at some point mostly a frame and a box of parts.
The rear wheel was bent and the rear hub badly worn due to no maintenance,So the wheel and 3 speed hub was replaced before I got it.
The Frame is Dec. 1975 Nottingham built. (Whitworth and Raliegh threads through and through) so this is as British a bike as there ever was.
The 1976 hub was replaced with a 1974 in great shape and has been serviced. The whole bike has been gone through now from stem to Stern.
I have been going on a lot of family rides and have put some miles on it now.
These sport bikes from England are very uncommon here in California, I'm told most sold in the U.S. went to the East Coast (New England).
Rideing a bike like this makes you want to dress in the finest tweed coat and knickers and do a tweed run.
I have been putting to gather a nice collection of Whitworth bike tools via ebay so the mail man has been kidding me about all the Royal Mail.
I changed the rear cog to a 22 tooth, so 1st gear is 42 2nd is 56 and 3rd 75.
So she climbs hills well and 3rd is more usable on the flats too, not just screaming down hill.
The brakes are upgraded to center pulls with over size soft grippie pads so she really stops well unlike the stock brakes.
It's not the lightest bike but it rides like a dream,I love it.
BEST OF ALL IT'S NOT MADE IN CHINA

[prestonchipfryer]

Hi Geoff. When I was a teenager there was a Raleigh bike in the local cycle shop window. I longed and really wanted it. That Christmas my Mum and Dad had bought it for me. I was the happiest 13-year-old in town. It had a three-speed Sturmey Archer gear and dynamo for the lights. As I remember it was a very similar colour to yours and I wish I still had it! :)

[Marco]

Top man, Jeff - love it! :thumbsup:

Marco.

[MikeMusic]

Deep in the open garage we have is my Raleigh Palm Beach roadster.
Bought 2nd hand from Currys, when they did bikes in 1961
Modded with twist grip gear change !
Not ridden for years.

Due to the desperate need for a service on my Giant TCR I just brought my 1985 ish Holdsworth out of the shed to use tomorrow.

So far as I know the biggest (decent) bike manufacturer in the world is Giant, from Taiwan and they make frames for a lot of other brands

[The Grand Wazoo]

I know someone who knows a thing or two about this sort of nonsense!
Steve, where are you?

[The Barbarian]

I used to have a BSA Bullet racing bike when i was a kid, later managed to get a second hand Eddy Merckx but sold it when i got into motor Bikes....If i were to buy another Racing bike it would be one of these

http://www.raydobbins.com/molteni_replica/molteni_replica.htm

[Marco]

It would be orange! :lolsign:

Marco.

[Accudazed]

I know someone who knows a thing or two about this sort of nonsense!
Steve, where are you?

Wow, this is a turnout for the books! This thread is perfect for me!

May as well be honest here, I am obsessed with vintage English bikes and am only to happy to 'show off' some of mine. Before the pics though, a biit of background information.

My favourite British bicycle manufacturer is the long gone Trusty Viscount Ltd a company born out of the ashes of the ill-fated Lambert marque in 1974. Lambert's vision was bold in the extreme - start from scratch and create a whole cycling city making all of the parts for their bikes. Lambert's talk of selling 50,000 bikes/week really had Raleigh worried especially when their bikes were winning races and costing/weighing less... Much of Lambert's engineering was radical too drawing heavily from expertise built up in the automative and aerospace industries. It didn't work though and after just 3 years Lambert was bust. Still, in no time at all a new company, Trusty Viscount Ltd. was making bikes from the former Lambert factory at Bilston. What Viscount did was continue with the radical Lambert 'aerospace' engineering but in way which actually worked:).

In no time at all, Viscount's Aerospace 'ten speed racer' bikes became a big hit in the USA and UK. Helped by Yamaha's well oiled sales operation Viscount shifted 30,000 bikes in the USA. And why not because there was much to admire in a Viscount bike (biased fan speaking here...:)): hand made beautifully finished lugless frame made of thin walled high strength steel tubing used in stunt aircraft, aerospace grade aluminium parts, sealed bearings in the hubs and bottom bracket, cast alloy fork (more on this later), various unique in house made parts (e.g. hubs, seat post, handlebar stem, brakes), ground breaking cast in one piece pedals fitted with needle bearings, etc, etc.

Best of all was the price as Viscount got the price/specification/low weight formula spot on.

It didn't last though (does it ever...?) as the spectre of component failure that dogged Lambert returned with a vengence. The collapse of the '10 speed racer' boom in the USA during 1977 did not help either.

Rumours of the unique cast alloy fork shearing off its mounting stem started to circulate from about 1976 onwards. This fork had already been redesigned by Viscount as the original Lambert alloy fork was prone to breaking (this happened to a friend of mine on a downhill decent. Without warning. Ouch...). History shows that the redesigned Viscount fork did fail and some people were very badly hurt. However, how many forks actually failed, who got hurt and whether the massive bill arising from the subsequent global fork recall wrecked Trusty Viscount is shrouded in mystery. Some of the former Viscount/Yamaha employees even now refuse to talk about what for them was a very difficult time. Whatever, the mark 3 Viscount fork - the death fork as it became known - is, unfairly, the most infamous bicycle part ever made. Try a google search on 'death fork' and, well, almost everyone seems to have an opinion! None of this worries me as my 'death forks' are all intact and regularly ridden on (although I occasionally see a faceless fella in a big cape stood at the side of the road holding a scythe - odd chap and he does seem to get about).

The death fork recall carried out in 1981 was the beginning of the end for Viscount even though sales were pretty healthy and their race team had world champions. In fact, by 1983 it was all over along with the dreams of market domination and a huge cycling city near Birmingham making radical 'game changer' parts.

But never mind, Viscount lives on thanks to nerdy obsessives like me who research, restore, ride and gross out on them at every opportunity! in fact, if you have a Viscount or Lambert please join us for our annual meet up on 28th June 2014 at Rolleston on Dove, Derbyshire, England. It really is a MUST ATTEND event! Turn up on any bike as we will be only too happy to meet you.

Now, enough of the words, here are some of my Viscounts :)

1. 1975 Viscount Aerospace Sport
I got this from the USA - my dream bike and original right down to the tyres. Found in a basement in Minnesota.

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x388/busaste/DSCN1717.jpg (http://s1179.photobucket.com/user/busaste/media/DSCN1717.jpg.html)

2. 1978 Viscount Aerospace Sport
One of the last made! Again totally original.

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x388/busaste/DSCN2686.jpg (http://s1179.photobucket.com/user/busaste/media/DSCN2686.jpg.html)

3. 1975 Viscount Aerospace Pro
Viscount's top bike which was used to win over 100 championships (road and cyclocross). Original apart from the tyres. Note, the death fork is intact and break free!

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x388/busaste/DSCN12271.jpg (http://s1179.photobucket.com/user/busaste/media/DSCN12271.jpg.html)

4. Another Viscount Aerospace Sport
I built this with NOS parts some of which were higher spec than from the factory but this was more a case of my dream bike to ride over historical preservation.

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x388/busaste/DSCN26031.jpg (http://s1179.photobucket.com/user/busaste/media/DSCN26031.jpg.html)

Some close ups:

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x388/busaste/DSCN25771.jpg (http://s1179.photobucket.com/user/busaste/media/DSCN25771.jpg.html)

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x388/busaste/DSCN25851.jpg (http://s1179.photobucket.com/user/busaste/media/DSCN25851.jpg.html)

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x388/busaste/DSCN2587.jpg (http://s1179.photobucket.com/user/busaste/media/DSCN2587.jpg.html)

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x388/busaste/DSCN2591.jpg (http://s1179.photobucket.com/user/busaste/media/DSCN2591.jpg.html)

Hope you enjoyed this post.

Would love to see more classic English bikes!

Cheers

Steve

[goraman]

John, The color is Coffee and this is also a 3 speed Sturmey Archer The Dynamo was mostly found on the Super be and Tourist I believe.
At one point I did a lot of reading about the purpose use for each model. Raliegh built each model with a task in mind.
For the most part aside from club bikes they made for real speed, they made bikes even there own workmen could get on and ride to work,pick up a sack of grocerys on the way home day in day out with minimal maintenance. Bikes built to last for years.
The ones I have seen here are mostly from the East Coast (Salt Air) high humidity are covered with rust, Most if not all British Chrome was not tripple plate copper ,nickle, chromium so it rusted and pitted unlike American Chrome. But still there are rusty old ride-able British bikes that have been left out side for most of there lives, proving they where made to last pitted peeling chrome and all.

[goraman]

Those Viscounts look like they spent their whole lives covered in Cosmoline, vacuum sealed in a 2 inch thick Plutonium 239 containment pod in the lowest level of an Egyptian pyramid.

[Mika K]

I'm sure you're already familiar with this book..

http://www.pushprojects.net/staging/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/handmade_yates.jpg

http://vimeo.com/43690903

[The Barbarian]

It would be orange! :lolsign:

Marco.

Purely a coincidence

:eyebrows:

[Alex_UK]

Meanwhile, at the low end of the market I have a Falcon Team Banana - not ridden for years though. Not mine but exactly the same:

http://brooklandscycles.com/userfiles/image/bikes/falcon01.jpg

I'd love a Raleigh Burner BMX too, chrome framed mk1... :)

[BTH K10A]

I used to have a Carlton with Reynolds 531 frame. In its day those magic numbers had kudos and it was the DB's, only top trumped by my mates Claude Butler with lots of campagnolo bits on it

[baron]

Here's my Dawes switchback, I've had it since the 80's, you can tell that by the colour. I've fitted road tyres and now use it for work when t's not raining.

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk320/baron103/Pink5.jpg (http://s283.photobucket.com/user/baron103/media/Pink5.jpg.html)

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk320/baron103/Pink4.jpg (http://s283.photobucket.com/user/baron103/media/Pink4.jpg.html)

http://

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk320/baron103/Pink3.jpg (http://s283.photobucket.com/user/baron103/media/Pink4.jpg.html)/albums/kk320/baron103/Pink4.jpg

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk320/baron103/Pink1.jpg (http://s283.photobucket.com/user/baron103/media/Pink1.jpg.html)