I too have been reading all of the Raleigh Pro posts with great interest.
A brown mink and silver MK 2 was my first pro bike and it changed my life,
although it took me several trades to get to the right frame size. I ended
up with a 23.5 " frame that came out of the window of a small shop in Cali
fornia. It was configured like a Mk. 2 with no chrome on the rear chainsta
ys, but had no special "Limited Edition" sticker. It was also about an inc
h shorter in wheelbase than a normal Mk 2 and it had Zeus dropouts. The wo
rkmanship on the bike was just beautiful with lug work to match all of cust
om bikes of the era. It was head and shoulders above the other production
bikes. During this time(1971 through 75) I worked in a Raleigh shop in San
ta Barbara and assembled a very large number of Pros and Internationals. T
he quality of the workmanship on the bikes varied a great deal and you real
ly didn't know what you would get until you opened the box. Some of the Pr
os came with the normal Prugnat style long point lugs while others had ugly
ornate and poorly brazed lugs. Some of the Internationals had Nervex lugs
while others had the same ugly lugs used on the Pros. The story I heard fr
om the Raleigh rep was that the Carlton guys had gone on strike so they had
Pros and Internationals built at the Raleigh factory. They sure looked li
ke it. I sold my Pro when I went to grad school in 1975 and pined for it t
hereafter. I acquired a very low mileage and untampered with Mark 3 a few
years ago and restored it. The workmanship on this bike compares very favor
ably with the more exotic bikes I now own and rides beautifully as well.
I'm sure that these "production" bikes were the entry for a lot of people i
nto the world of bike lust. Tom Hansen Los Angeles