Re:[CR]Moral quandary: my sister's new Raleigh Grand Sports

(Example: Framebuilders:Dario Pegoretti)

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:20:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: Donald Gillies <gillies@cs.ubc.ca>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: Re:[CR]Moral quandary: my sister's new Raleigh Grand Sports

I wouldn't strip the bars, stem, brakes, or crankset. The crankset is state of the art light, and you still can't buy an aluminum crankset that's much lighter than that stronglight 93 (although you'd have to move the chainrings to the outer platter and take off the spoke protector to fully realize its lightness).

The normandy high flange hubs will work great. The weinmann alesa rims are the narrow 18mm type and would also work great with panaracer pasela 27 1 1/4 wired on tires which are no worse than the very best wired on 700c tires you can buy anywhere, even today.

The brakes are very powerful if properly set up, and with fresh pads. If necessary, buy some fresh, soft jagwire pads (about $6 a set) which are exactly the right 40/42mm size and even come with dome nuts like the weinmanns. Don't throw away the holders, as they are worth $10 at least by themselves on ebay. I'd hold onto them to keep the original brakeset intact.

The only thing i'd probably change is the gear system and maybe pedals if I were modernizing such a bike for my sister. For pedals, MKS sylvan or touring (black sylvans like campy superleggera are available from bensbike in milwaukee wisconsin.) All I'd probably do is to change the gears to suntour cyclone or V/xGT with barcon fingertip controls. If you want to keep it 'spirit correct' change the gears to SIMPLEX SX410 all-metal gears and alloy levers. The SIMPLEX levers will probably snap pretty soon. I'd leave the rest of the bike untouched, and only replace wear items (brake pads, tires) as needed.

You can't improve on near perfection. This bike is the intellectual ancestor of the loaded-touring TREK 520, still in production.

- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA