Hi Steve,
Thanks for the welcome. It's nice to know there are plenty of Raleigh enthusiasts out there. That's interesting information about your frame. I recall seeing a Marianne Berglund Team Frame last year on Ebay (as you all can tell, I prowl Ebay a lot for vintage bike stuff). I believe many of the actual frames used for racing were made by "other" builders such as Marinoni.
You'll laugh when I tell you that one of the first things that I did after buying my 1974 Supercourse was to remove the top tube "Supercourse" decals!! As a teenager, I was not concerned with preserving originality. Actually, all my friends did this. We thought the bikes looked cleaner and cooler without too many decals. We also did not want to "advertise" that we had only "mid-range" bikes as opposed to the more desirable higher range models. I eventually bought a Sugino Mighty crankset (Campy Nuovo Record clone) to replace my cottered cranks, 3TTT bars and stem, and a no-name suede racing seat. These along with my custom built Campy Tipo/Mavic tubular wheelset completed my Supercourse's "transformation". My Brooks B-15 seat found its way onto my Mercier, and it remained rock hard until the day I sold the Mercier 27 years later :).
Along with the deal for my Team Replica, the seller included a complete set of decals for the frame. So I have the full set with the exception of the Reynolds 531C decal. They'll come in handy when I decide to have bike painted/retored someday.
Warren
-----Original Message----- From: questor@cinci.rr.com [mailto:questor@cinci.rr.com] Sent: Friday, July 06, 2001 7:57 PM To: Warren Tang; classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: Re: [CR]Intro and comments - Raleighs prefered
Hello Warren,
Welcome aboard! I am also a Raleigh enthusiast - I own 3 Raleigh Competitions, 1 Professional, and 1 original Team Pro. The Team Pro is being restored (new paint job and Campy SR Gruppo), but was originally ridden by Marianne Berglund to the 1984 World Championship! My 11 year old son will use this next year as he tries his hand at Junior racing.
Like you, I am also a MIS person who works for International Paper here in Cincinnati, Ohio. I am a LAN Administrator who also dabbles with high end graphics. In fact, I have produced **exact** copies of complete decal sets (TT, DT, ST, CS, Carleton, Reynolds, Campy) for Raleigh Professional, International, and Competition frame sets that I am currently testing for ease of application and possible future sales to bike enthusiasts. However, I am missing the Super Course top tube decals that would let me finish the 531 series. If you are interested in additional Raleigh pics and specs, check out the following Retro Raleighs URL for info and the following H Lloyd Cycles site for Raleigh decals:
http://www.speakeasy.org/
I am interested in your Team Pro because while mine is original, it has an interesting history. In the 1983-84 season, Raleigh International was cash-strapped with reduced sales in the USA. Huffy approached Raleigh to franchise the Raleigh USA marketing rights because Huffy had good distribution in large chain stores but little sales to small or custom bike shops. As a result, some people claimed that Huffy "bought" credibility in 1983 by purchasing the Raleigh USA marketing rights. My bike and yours are products of that Huffy/Raleigh brief marrage. However, my frame was made completely with Raleigh lug parts by Marinoni in Vermont yet was made with Columbus SL tubing... The irony is that Raleigh heavily advertised the 1984 wins on 531 tubing yet my Raleigh "Columbus" tubing actually completed the majority of that season. Huffy found after several seasons that the Raleigh franchise was not selling as well as they had hoped, so they did not renew the marketing agreement with Raleigh.
Once again, Welcome!
Steve Neago
aka Questor1